Kenyan media's favourite newsmaker, loyal ally and at times risky adversary

Raila Odinga had a fragile romance of mutual survival with the media in Kenya, and he knew when to court it, when to support it, when to scold it, when to weaponise it and when to revel in the publicity. 

For years, top print editors and media managers had a not-so-public secret that was whispered in the daily revenue meetings in boardrooms about how Raila Odinga “sold” newspapers and “grew audiences”.

His photo and name on the front page guaranteed higher sales in some parts of the country. A soundbite on radio or a videoclip on TV, kept the audiences glued. However, in other parts, it was a sign of higher-than-expected newspaper returns on the day, or the shocking muting or switching off of TV for a few minutes until the bulletin moved on to something else.

Sure, he was a polarising figure, and the media had to find creative ways to exploit his political brand without losing their paying customers or being branded partisan.

That he was a dependable news source with a compelling (hi)story was somewhat automatic. He was the son of Kenya’s first vice president, and until his death on October 15, 2025, he was the country’s longest-running top opposition politician, a former prime minister and minister, with the scars to show for his political journey. All these things are magnets for journalists, writers, podcasters, comedians, TikTokers and even puppeteers. It makes for great content.

Odinga also had high-profile journalists in his orbit, with Salim Lone, Sarah Elderkin, Dennis Onyango, Kathleen Openda-Mvati, Philip Etale, Dennis Onsarigo, and many more, who worked with him and for him. That helped in sharpening his media intelligence and relations with journalists, keeping him on message, and sharing their networks with a man who believed in media freedom to further his democracy agenda for Kenya and for Africa.

High-energy rallies

They all helped build the reputation of the man, covering his high-energy rallies,  documenting his brave rebellion against power and statecraft, writing the story of his life, and curating soundbites and video clips from his long interviews.

If you read the tributes to the man online, nearly every journalist of a certain age has a personal anecdote, a photo, a personal moment with Odinga. It is in these moments, usually the first or last ten parts of his sit-downs with journalists, that he bantered about anything, village politics, personal stuff, and even football. He charmed journalists.

Yes, Odinga was a media-savvy politician, a man who knew how to use the power of the pen and the microphone to build a narrative. He was also a brilliant storyteller, who used history, riddles and proverbs to retell the stories of his exploits, sell his political vision for Kenya, and, at times, to spin his way out of political deals.

In one of his last public speeches in August 2025, Odinga loudly spoke about the corruption in the media and dangerously suggested that investigative stories are paid for.

“The media is also not blameless here. The media is very much deeply involved. If you see the media saying ‘we are exposing corruption here’, they have been paid,” he said.

This whispered trope about the pervasive nature of corruption in Kenya’s society, including the unsettling graft within the media, when said out loud, was risky for investigative journalism. A corrupt investigator is evil. Journalists getting paid under the table is unprofessional, immoral, and unethical. Yet, few people, knowing the power of the media, dare raise such questions.

It is understandable. No one wants to generate excuses for the government to crack down on press freedom. Still, some would-be critics feared languishing in a publicity desert if the media slapped them with a news blackout.  Only one politician in Kenya could credibly call it out: Raila Odinga. Even though he, too, had a newly acquired reputation of being complicit in laundering the corrupt kleptocrats within government or with links to the government. His age and record as a defender of the media played a role in the final analysis.

And yes, in 2018 and 2023, during protests, he called on his supporters to boycott some media houses. It was odd, but not unexpected, given the well-documented media capture and intimidation that the administrations of Uhuru Kenyatta and his successor William Ruto, perfected in their tenures.

He knew the power of his colossal political base and the harm it would cause when he called an economic boycott. He did it anyway, and got his political deals.

Cornered and beaten

In newsrooms, journalists told stories about how they had suffered when diehard Odinga supporters and his loyal spokespeople fought back against what they thought was “negative coverage” of their principal.

In one instance, often taught in journalism safety classes, there’s a journalist who was cornered and beaten up by Odinga’s supporters for what they read as a negative story. Odinga personally apologised and read a riot act to the goons that had beaten up the journalist. It’s the most he could do at that point, because the damage had already been done. The rest was for the police to press charges and the courts to do their job.

The fact that the beatings rarely happened –they actually should never happen in a democratic society– points to the possibility that his people caught on that journalists were important to their cause, and it hurt their principal whenever they beat up the messengers. Or perhaps, it was just self-censorship in play, as a safety tool.

In his tenure as Prime Minister, the media mirror was too glaring for his comfort, and he often fought back, with his cantankerous spokespeople calling the media higher-ups, intimidating journalists, if they believed a story, however true, and sometimes, simply fabricated, to be politically damaging.

As a defender of media freedom, Odinga often instructed senior lawyers in his orbit, usually, counsels Paul Mwangi and James Orengo, to step in to rescue journalists facing State reprisals.

The political solidarity and the pro bono legal services helped slam the brakes on some of the overzealous State officials with oppressive proclivities.

Most times, whenever there were State excesses, he spoke out. When the State bungled the migration from analogue to digital broadcasting, he called them out, and exposed the hidden hand using the digital migration as an excuse by the government to muzzle the media and take control of key nodes of broadcasting. Most times, whenever the police harassed the media, or the government threatened draconian action to punish critical journalists, he issued statements in solidarity.

I am a beneficiary of his back-channelling and public legal support, thanks in part to the politically plugged-in editor David Ohito, and so are many other colleagues, who remember the chilling threats from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to reveal our sources.

For all his solidarity with the media over the years, as Odinga recalibrated politically, and shook hands with Uhuru Kenyatta in 2018, and with William Ruto in 2024, he periodically retreated into moments of queasy silence, as he courted his rivals-turned-allies.

He spoke yes, about, the switching off of media houses, the shutting down or throttling of the internet, the attacks on journalists, and the extrajudicial killing of young protestors. But the fire was gone, and he was in bed with the very oppressors. The words were the same, yet he sounded duplicitous. Kenyans expected more. But he was a politician playing politics. He tried to  spin his muted responses and at times tactical silence as necessary for national stability.

Public figures have written books about how he tried to use journalists to do his bidding, including to pile pressure on public institutions to bend to his wishes. Others have publicly accused some journalists as partial towards Odinga. In short, he knew how to weaponise the legacy media to his advantage.

Digital generation

That world ended, and now the media is digital, with TikTok, YouTube, X and Facebook as the key players. Yes, he was on those platforms. However, times had changed and in the digital world, commandeered by 60 per cent of Kenyans under the age of 25, many who have little appreciation or no recollection of Odinga’s struggles and sacrifices, he became just another politician.

A section of the digital crowd, enjoying their freedom because of his struggles for free expression and free media loved him, another section saw him as a traitor, and they told him as much in his social media feeds. It was a new world, yet he was the same man, loved and loathed; yet, still great fodder for viral content.

In the words of the chief executive of the Media Council of Kenya, David Omwoyo, Odinga always made room for the media.

“Whenever we in the media wanted Baba. He came through. He fought for our freedoms. We honour him,” Omwoyo said as the news of Odinga’s death filtered from India.

He was great for the media. He loved the media and the media loved him back, even as they fell out, made up and fell out again. As the tension brewed, debate swirled, and the intellectual lovers fought and made up repeatedly, usually in public, the democratic space flourished.

And that unending tension, with all its weaknesses, was, on balance, great for Kenya.