Friday, August 3, 2007

Journalists Suck!

I can't believe i am so naive at my age but once again I've found out that i really am. My trusting of the world and the people in it is really beginning to depress me!
I met a journalist last week from a well known newspaper in London and he's the 'Africa' correspondent i presume. Anyway i was given his number and was asked if i would speak to him with regards to an article he's like to write about our business and how well it was doing here in Kenya.
Seemed fine to me so i gave him a call and we arranged a meeting to discuss his article. He seemed like a nice enough guy - chatting readily about what he'd been up to, what he'd seen and who he's spoken to with regards to our business in general and we discussed what our company was up to with regards to the competition and how i felt we had all carved out our own niches in the market and that there was more than enough room for everyone and we seemed to get along well.
Well - what a load of bollocks!
He promised the story would be in on Monday - and when it wasn't i sent him a text asking if he'd be putting it in - big mistake! He published it Tuesday or Wednesday - and he'd written an entire article about how brilliant the competition was, how they were the market leaders and we got a one line mention which basically said we only set up our business to compete with the leaders and we were lumped together with a third company that's products are so inferior - its a bloody insult!!
How could i be so stupid. All i can say is luckily our Kenyan reporters when writing about business aren't so damn biased (politics I'm not so sure) but with regards our business we have had many articles written locally and i think they are mainly pretty fair about all of us.
Anyway all i can say really is it serves me right for being so trusting in people once again - i shouldn't have wasted my time talking to the guy in the first place - and i set aside 2 hours for that can you believe - and i should know better. I mean - he was a South African after all pretending he was British - i mean 'Christ Alive' - I'm more British than he'll ever be!!

PHEW - Glad i got that off my chest - at least now i can go back to my innocent trusting happy go lucky self! HE HE!!

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