Media houses were Tuesday
accused of misleading the court
in their push to get digital
licences.
Lawyer Fred Ngatia, for GoTV,
argued that media owners
actively participated in
meetings that recommended
the switch-off date and that it
was unfair for them to turn to
the court when they had the
opportunity to apply for the
licences.
It is regrettable that Nation
Media Group, Royal Media
Services and Standard Media
Group filed a petition in the
High Court leading to this
appeal on the basis that they
were discriminated against
when there is evidence that
they were given the
opportunity which they did not
seize, said Mr Ngatia.
The lawyer told a three-judge
bench of the Court of Appeal
that the media houses had
confused the right to develop
content with the right to have
a digital licence.
He further said the media
houses push was contrary to
their own agreement with the
government.
Signal distribution and
content provision are two
distinct issues and in a
meeting attended by media
representatives, they agreed
that content service providers
should not assume digital
signal distribution due to their
interest, said Mr Ngatia.
The three media houses,
however, maintained that the
digital licences were not in
conformity with the
recommendations of the
government taskforce.
Lawyer Philip Murgor said the
licences issued to the foreign
pay TV providers did not
comply with a recommendation
that they have at least 20 per
cent local shareholding.
The ICT policy recommended
that at least 20 per cent of
shareholding of licences in
digital television broadcast be
allocated to Kenyans by the
third year after issuance of the
licences but this has not been
complied with, said Mr
Murgor.
Mr Ngatia said the different
meetings of the government
taskforce on digital migration
were attended by
representatives of the media
owners, who were in agreement
for an early date for migration.
He said the three media
houses voluntarily entered into
a contract with MultiChoice
Africa to carry their content
through digital signals and
their claim of infringement on
their intellectual property
rights was unfounded.
On the tender for allocation of
digital licences and
frequencies, Mr Ngatia
submitted that the media
houses actively participated
and their bid rejected for lack
of security.
They even appealed against
the rejection of their bid at the
procurement board. After the
case was dismissed, they failed
to file a review at the High
Court as provided by law only
to wait for over two years to file
a constitutional petition, said
Mr Ngatia.