The national media went into a “Ruto frenzy” that was, by any reasonable measure, grossly overdone.

There was something vaguely pitiable about the media’s obsequiousness in reporting this story, which — by any practice of fair news reporting — should have received, in the case of the print media, a brief front page reportage when it first broke and even briefer, if any, follow-up coverage in the middle pages. One news outlet even offered a blow-by-blow account of Ruto’s odyssey from Nairobi to The Hague and back.

One can appreciate the journalistic purpose and historical significance of a comprehensive coverage (including a blow-by-blow account) of Mandela’s release from prison, of the promulgation of the new Constitution or even of the South Sudan referendum on secession.

Ruto’s, however, was a bewildering and disheartening media hype that, for days, sidelined stories critical to our nationhood, identity and democratisation effort.

(And now that the ICC has summoned the Ocampo Six to appear at The Hague shortly, I fear that the media circus will be back in town and, once again, vitally important national issues will be given a news blackout.)

Recently, the media scored another low point, when — for a painfully long period — it insisted on covering contenders for top political positions in 2012 hurling abuse one normally associates with bar brawls at each other.

So nasty was the aftertaste that one news outlet, ashamed of its own excesses, apologetically asked its viewers for feedback on what they thought of politicians trading insults as news. An overwhelming majority of viewers expressed disgust and anger.

It is a national tragedy when people who will supposedly lead Kenya to become a middle-income country by 2030 offer crude insults instead of policies, but for anyone who watched the news that week, the overwhelming emotion, in addition to disgust and anger, was not sadness but shame.

We felt ashamed that, out of a population of 40 million, these were the only newsworthy people — the best we could offer. But were they really? Surely, there were other Kenyans (business people, musicians, religious leaders, youth, women groups, activists, etc) who were engaged in activities that were inspirational, transformational or entertaining, even in the shadow of the media spotlight.

The media, by covering the insulters day in and day out, even as they demeaned us as a country and as a people, was telling us that they were.

How did we come to this strange and unhappy place?

Here we are, a country just recovering from death and mayhem, and still in the depths of the resulting economic recession, a country wracked by crime that is about to get out of control a la Mexico, ranking highly on the list of failed states, a country in the delicate process of enacting a new Constitution that should fundamentally redefine our governance and society and our very identity, and yet for the media, the personal tribulations of a politician suspected of crimes against humanity and the exchanges of bar-level insults constitute national news and define the national agenda.

The media, wittingly or unwittingly, is focusing on the wrong agenda, propagating a skewed value system and duping us into individual self-deprecation and national self-abnegation.

In his book, Language in the News, Roger Fowler causes us to pose to ourselves a fundamental question: How much of the news we read, watch or listen to is an unadulterated representation of the truth, and how much of it is a social construction?

Clearly, as shown by the above examples, the Kenyan media was constructing a national agenda and a sense of priority unrelated to our own objective reality as experienced in daily living.