THIEVING QUACK JOURNALIST UNMASKED VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

The reported Luke Githinji

A thieving quack who lifted an iPad at a BPO function recently was unmasked on social media yesterday.

After his picture was circulated to media houses and subsequently on the net, one Robert Alai, not known to mince words wrote:

Robert Alai ‏@RobertAlai

The iPad thief highlighted in this blog post is called Luke Githinji. His number is 0712978119 http://bit.ly/KxuJzI - RT Pls

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As of writing this post, there had been 29 retweets including by the Kenya Police official twitter account.

 Left is the picture he uses on Facebook. Given by his account, this must be when he graduated from the Kenya Institute of Media and Technology, yeah, I know you are asking (Where the hell is that?)

I don't know.

The man's motives aside, the bigger issue here that needs to be addressed is the growing armies of quacks who invade functions sometimes outnumbering guests and end up either stealing, extorting money, drinking themselves silly or basically making the journalism fraternity look bad.

Shown there is a screenshot of Mr. Githinji's Facebook page. 

He seems a recent entrant, or an introvert. He has 69 friends.

QUACKS

The business journalism field is the worst hit by this problem.

Nowadays, genuine reporters at a function will normally make up about 30 per cent, the rest being unknowns who give no value to the host and end up demanding favours for work not delivered. Some have become well known and perhaps it is time that the fraternity did what the political desks did some years back.

To hear it from veterans, two notorious quacks had taken to impersonating legit political journalists, appearing at functions and extorting politicians in other people's names.

THE UNMASKING

Then, social media was not around to unhood the likes of our friend Luke. The politicos decided to use another tactic. 

At different subsequent functions, camera men and photographers were asked to train their lenses on the two and make sure they got good shots. 

When they were sure they had enough footage, they put together a story to be aired and ran cautioning on two masqueraders roaming the town.

The two fellas promptly went underground.

BUSINESS PRESS, CLIENTS AND PR AGENCIES

There is need now, for action to be taken and it has to be done in concert with the three most affected parties, the business desks, clients they cover and the agencies who bring the two together.

A collaborative effort to unmask these quacks and circulate their pictures and profiles both to clients, and PR agencies and to the police if necessary is needed to clean up the industry and restore the good name of the business press.

Over to you!