Ethical Journalism in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Content Review of the Media Council of Kenya's Handbook for Reporting on Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

This study critically examined the Media Council of Kenya's (MCK) Media Handbook for Reporting on Artificial Intelligence in Kenya as an institutional framework for governing ethical AI use in journalism. Although there has been an increasing amount of research into AI governance in the West, empirical research on AI governance on the African continent is relatively underdeveloped. This study aims to fill that gap by systematically analyzing the MCK handbook using qualitative content analysis that focuses on five ethical dimensions of accountability, transparency, human oversight, structural equity and enforcement capacity. Secondary empirical data was collected through peer-reviewed research on Kenyan journalism, on African media systems and on what is happening in the world of AI and journalism, and was fed in to examine the claims made in an existing handbook against the documented newsroom realities. Based on Social Responsibility Theory and Critical Political Economy of Media, the findings show that there are three significant patterns. First, the handbook shows a high level of normative consistency with internationally accepted principles of AI ethics, such as "Human-in-the-Loop" oversight and verification. Second, it has substantial gaps, most significantly because of the lack of enforcement mechanisms, poor considerate engagement with the political economy of AI in African media and the lack of contextualization in the Kenyan socio-political context. Third, the governance assumptions are often at odds with what is realistically found in Kenyan newsrooms, such as the economic precarity, reliance on technology and lack of equal access to verification tools. The study provides a framework for analyzing AI journalism governance documents from an African perspective using an empirical approach and offers concrete evidence-based suggestions for enhancing the usefulness and practicality of the MCK handbook.