Kusadikika wrote:I do not see how anyone can blame the Daily Nation for publishing the obituary. It is not as if the obituary section is ran by a group of forensic experts who have to ascertain that the obituary being presented for publication is indeed for someone who is actually dead. I have never been there but I suspect the process of getting an obituary published is rather simple and straight forward. You probably are asked to choose a size, maybe color, I would guess maybe the page. You are probably asked to present the photo and maybe fill names on a preprinted template. A clerk probably checks to see that the form is filled out correctly, that the client is sure that the picture is the right one and then charges the appropriate fee and issues a receipt. The same person probably does this 100 times a day, sees a hundred pictures a day.
For the longest time Jimmy Wanjigi never showed himself in the public, in fact the very first picture of him was published during Jacob Juma's funeral so although he may think he is important, he is not necessarily famous and there are many Kenyans who do not know him or know what he looks like.
You are right and wrong at the same time. Right because nation can navigate this mess legally. Wrong because reputation risk is never about legality but perceived right/wrong. The staff who key in obituaries are not like you and me. They have done it thousands of times. Ditto their editor. And that is why they should be able to pick up that one obituary that "feels" odd. The burial date for example was a dead give-away. Someone would have picked up the name Kwacha. Nation did a serialisation of Wanjigi last year under the banner, "state capture". While he is unknown outside, inside NMG, he is a well known name.
I worked for a tier-1 bank at some point in my life. A customer wrote in the cutting edge that they had been given a fake 1,000 note in a certain branch. Those days there was no social media. The bank responded that it was the duty of the customer to confirm that he received genuine notes before leaving the bank. A legally perfect response. The avalanche of responses in the cutting edge left the bank with egg all over its face. We had to write an apology and compensate that customer. But the damage was done. Todate, the policy in that bank is that the manager weighs the veracity of such claims by customers and the default reaction is to compensate. Luckily, they are very few.