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Media group 'sorry' for cartoon
13/02/2006 09:52 - (SA)
Nairobi - Kenya's biggest media group on Sunday apologised for airing televison clips of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a group of angry Muslim youths threatened to storm its offices.
Two days after Kenyan police clashed with hundreds of demonstrators in Nairobi protesting the publication of the drawings in European media, the Nation Media Group said it had intended no offence by the broadcast.
The firm's chief, Wilfred Kiboro, said in an announcement during Sunday's evening news that the network had sought only to explain the controversy by airing brief clips of the caricatures first published by a Danish newspaper.
"The Nation Media Group would like to explain that the images of the cartoon were broadcast within the context of trying to help our audiences to better understand the strong feelings they had evoked," he said.
"We are aware that some media houses elsewhere have shown the cartoons with a view of attacking Islam. That was not our intention" Kiboro said.
"At Nation Media Group, we firmly believe that used outside context the cartoons are provocative, insensitive and offensive to Islams. Nation Televison simply wanted to capture a developing story that has caused so much pain around the world," he said.
"However, we recognise that even within this context, the images have offended our Muslim brothers and sisters. Nation Media Group deeply regrets this unintended outcome and would like to offer its most sincere apologies to Muslims," Kiboro said.
Company officials said they had aired the apology after getting a warning that Muslim youths planned to attack the network's offices in downtown Nairobi.
"We received information that Muslims were planning to attack us," the group's editorial director Wangethi Mwangi told AFP.
"Given the situation that has been going on across the world, we thought it was prudent to pre-empt any action they are contemplating."
Protests against the cartoons turned violent in Kenya on Friday, when security forces fired tear gas at a group of stone-throwing demonstrators attempting to break through a police cordon to march on the Danish embassy.
At least one person was injured in the chaos, and one was killed and six others wounded in a protest-related traffic accident.
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