Though an open secret that the once vibrant Media entity is slowly losing its oomph to competition including online platforms; poor management has been sighted as a course.
Standard Media group where the Moi Family has a majority of shares has a number of bosses from a community who run the media house as a family business.
A case in study is Carole Kimutai who was brought in barely a month to the August elections as the new Managing Editor of the Firm’s Digital Platform and who the staff under her have accused of being “a condescending bully with a foul mouth and who lacks professionalism.”
Kimutai is formerly a founding editor with TUKO online website.
A staff claims Kimutai continuously picks on the digital sub-editors and has created an unfavorable and unpleasant work environment by the way she targets and discriminates against her team.
The egocentric lady is said cannot stand divergent views from her juniors, often finds fault where there is none and even goes ahead to sabotage her subordinate by re-editing and giving wrong headlines.
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It is reported that during Editorial meetings, she goes ham on her juniors and refers to digital stories as “bullshit,” threatens employees with “I will go or you will go,I am the boss, tantrums are unacceptable, I will not ask you to respect me just because you are beautiful,” among other jabs she throws at them.
At one point, she allegedly claimed she will personally deal with the online team whatever that means after warning and pronouncing “I will be a bitch.”
Her juniors told Kahawa Tungu they feel helpless, threatened and at a loss. One mused;
“What happens when a boss is openly biased and targets her staff members with the intention to intimidate them? Where is the line drawn? Am I allowed to have a differing opinion from my boss; and if I am, am I allowed to speak up or is it policy that I should sit down and let her beat me down day-in day-out?”
Another complained thus,”We need a clarification on our job descriptions. Standard Digital has been ranked among the top sites in fake news; this was not the case before. We also used to be the number one news website in Kenya, we have since dropped to third position falling behind TUKO and Nation,”he/she said adding that,
“Most of the time, the ME forces us to rewrite stories from other websites and fetch from social media in bid to “catch-up” with other news outlets. I feel that has significantly reduced our content.This affects our image professionally and if it turns out that the story was a sham or not fitting for the Standard Digital platform, it significantly dents our image”.
Standard Media Group needs to foster in the welfare of its junior employees facing harassment and intimidation from the company’s “powers that be” and their cronies. As a leading media house, it should bridle seniors and en devour to provide an accommodating and conducive atmosphere for the junior workers.
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