Sex Scandals Threaten to Bring Down Nation Media Group

Even as he began setting his own agenda, sacking 36 senior managers and sending home a great number of editorial staff over the last six days, Linus Gitahi is a man literally under fire over internal grumbling by staff over the management of the giant Group pridefully coded NMG (Nation Media Group), a media house has reported.

According to a web posting by www.abunuwasi.com, an online media house, the Staff are threatening to take complains out of the newsroom referred in journalism lingua as 'House on the Hill' and to the houses of its senior managers and the streets of Nairobi - a situation Gitahi is working overtime to avoid.

The staff at NMG is complaining of open favoritism, demands for sexual favors and lack of outright professionalism from a large section of its serving senior managers.

The three managers who are mentioned in the letter to the CEO and whose names we withhold to enable our independent investigations are accused of taking sexual escapades with employees to the romantic resort of Malindi in Coast and other places before promoting female employees.

The authors of the letter alleged to be responsible for the recent mass sackings that have sent shockwaves across the giant media house, take issue with specific promotions that they say, "were done without consideration of merit."

In one particular case they say, " the promotion of (name withheld) came after a senior manager (name withheld) took her to Malindi and she did not go through the process she instantly became an editor of one of the pullout magazines (Name of pullout magazine withheld), that is despite the fact that she cannot write anything of literal value and the editing of the (said) magazine is done by correspondents."

The journalists drawn from the Nairobi office and Bureaus countrywide claim in the letter: “We held a meeting at a location which we will not disclose and came up with a clear strategy which we will soon be affecting."

The employees have further warned the new CEO to either sack four of its senior managers or face their wrath through a system they do not disclose in the letter.

"Let us warn them (the managers whose names we withhold) that if their conscience does not warrant them to resign their posts by the end of February we will present their wives with the evidence we have about their escapades, and after that we will also inform the Agha Khan, the founder and Chairman of the Agha Khan Development Network (AKDN), of how his house has been turned into a ‘brothel’, the employees threaten.

A senior female manager in the Human Resources (HR) Section is also being warned to quit her post or be sacked of face an expose of an extra-marital affair with a Director of another leading media house located along Harry Thuku Road.

Gitahi has since responded to demands in the first letter which had a deadline of January and the employees have given him a benefit of doubt stretched to the end of next month.

"Like President Kibaki put his foot into his mouth, by not sacking senior civil servants who served under the Moi Regime (read Kiboro), we are the opinion that by retaining some of this managers you are wasting an opportunity of real reform in the Editorial Department."

"Some of those managers do not deserve a sitting anywhere beyond the copy-editing desk," the media house stated in accordance with documents leaked to them by a prime source at NMG.

As the storm in Nation rises, the employees conclude their letter thus, "we cannot hold Bishop Margaret Wanjiru (the beleaguered head of Jesus Is Alive Ministries) and Samuel Gichuru (former Kenya Power and Lighting Company CEO) to higher moral standards when we the face of the society continue to grapple in immorality."

They however offer a reprieve, "if our demands are met we will support you and the reform process you are undertaking." Their chief complains is that the same people they are complaining about are the same ones in charge of the reform process.

Gitahi, just two months in office faces a gigantic task of steering the influential media house through the same path that was treaded by his predecessor Wilfred Kiboro who now sits in the board of the company as an advisor.

Ends…