Kenya Insights

Tag: RMS

  • Victoria Rubadiri Quits Citizen TV

    Victoria Rubadiri Quits Citizen TV

    Journalist Victoria Rubadiri is set to leave Citizen TV after a six-year stay for CNN Africa’s correspondent position.

    According to sources, the reporter has already served her employer the Royal Media Services (RMS) with a notice of resignation and will be presenting Sunday Live at the station this weekend as her last show.

    Rubadiri joins a stream of big names who’ve been departing the once giant media house for other ventures. Hassan Mugambi left the station recently for a communications job in the Defence Ministry while reporter Chemutai Goin also left for a job in the Speaker’s office.

    Other notable names that have left Citizen TV in the recent past include Hussein Mohammed, Francis Gachuri who took governmental offices and Willis Raburu who moved to TV47.

    Rubadiri now takes a familiar path with Larry Madowo who incidentally was her former co-host at NTV. Larry is currently CNN’s international correspondent based in Washington DC.

    Rubadiri’s career as a journalist

    Rubadiri graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from Temple University in the US. She worked in various roles in the US, including an assistant to a CEO and intern at WMGM-NBC 40 TV.

    In Kenya, she joined Capital FM as a Business Journalist in 2011. She later joined the Nation Media Group (NMG) as an anchor and reporter, responsible for the primetime news show NTV Weekend Edition. She also hosted the talk show ‘Victoria’s Lounge’, which covered topics such as mental health, gender equality, and governance.

    After leaving NTV in 2018, she joined RMS as a senior anchor and had a six-year stint at Citizen TV. She also had a brief stint at radio, but quit three months after joining. Rubadiri is the recipient of the 2020 BBC Komla Dumor Award, a journalism award launched by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in honor of Ghanaian journalist Komla Dumor.

    She took a three-month leave from Citizen TV in September 2021 and returned in December that year.

  • Royal Media’s Victor Kinuthia Best and Worst Case Scenario

    Royal Media’s Victor Kinuthia Best and Worst Case Scenario

    Kenyans were baffled by Royal media journalist Victor Kinuthia who went rather was allowed to report on live coverage about the ongoing case and arrest of Kiharu MP in English, a language that clearly seemed to challenge the young Journo.

    The reporter attached to Inooro TV was trolled by Kenyans on social media after covering the arrest of Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro in what other users called Kikuyenglish.

    He, however In a post on his Facebook account, Kinuthia said that although he had been bullied online, his fellow colleagues and Kenyans had reached out and he felt encouraged.

    “I almost gave up when I found myself trending all over after yesterday’s 9 pm news. But after receiving calls and texts from my bosses, colleagues, friends, and fans I must say am encouraged,” Kinuthia stated.

    Here is a video Courtesy of @KennyKaburu of Royal Media Journalist Victor Kinuthia reporting live from Murang’a

    The video would later attract trolls from KOT  and other social media app users claiming that Royal media decided to display their githeri media journalist on live coverage.

    Here is samples of the trolls from Kenyans On Twitter.

     

    However, the good case scenario is that Kenya’s Top journalists from different media houses have come out strongly to defend embattled presenter Victor Kinuthia. which senior-most Journalists and media personalities urging him to never give up nor allow trolls to shut his ambitions and dreams down.

    Here are samples of their messages to Victor Kinuthia.

     

    First things first, Victor has been reporting mainly in Gikuyu, his own dialect which makes it difficult to switch easily, quickly and most importantly, perfectly to reporting in English. Yes, I get it, but, why is he not yet fired like other journalists who flop once and they get their contracts terminated with immediate effect for ‘shaming the brand’? Even before firing him, why did they, whoever that is/are in charge of live reporting at RMS, allow a vernacular based journalist to report live in a language that he might, is,  not familiar with?

    My worst-case scenario is, Victor Kinuthia might be a lucky example of the much-needed connections to keep media gigs and contracts in Kenya. Victor, in my opinion might be having a high-end connection that ‘placed’ him there and the connection is so deep to an extent that a group of Kenya’s most prominent journalists had to be involved in cleaning this clear clumsiness scenario. Will this “support” happen rather be unanimously expressed to every other ‘first time’ journos in the media industry?