Hypocrisy won't do.

The right of for-profit corporations to turn a profit is not absolute, even if they play significant public policy roles. For-profit corporations must comply with regulations for the safety of the people who consume their products, must pay taxes, must pay their employees decent wages, must not exploit their employees and must be properly registered in order to carry on their businesses. So long as they remain principally for-profit organisations, they must also face hostile business environments that might be engendered by economic downturns or increased competition or disruptive technologies.

Print advertising is oftentimes done by for-profit organisations, whether they be ad firms or media houses, meaning news organisations. The Nation Media Group, the Standard Group, Media Max, Royal Media Services and several others form the core of the political news organisations in Kenya, though they are diversified media companies offering anything from hard political news to teen pop music shows to religious fare. The core of their operations, however, is not the political news they print or broadcast on a daily basis, but the advertising which the political news attracts. The members of the Media Owners Association will not be quick to admit that politics, for them, does not drive greater public discourse or civic engagement in government, but drives advertising - the main source of revenue and profit for any serious media organisation.

It is in this context that the recent editorials by media owners are to be seen. The two leading sellers of advertising space to the Government of Kenya are the Nation Media Group and the Standard Group. They would love to perpetuate the duopoly, even if it means shaving the facts to suit their circumstances. While both have a pretty strong online presence, it is not particularly innovative. It is too sophisticated for most Kenyans save for the elite minority that can afford greater internet access and mobile bandwidth.

While many Kenyans have made the leap to smartphone ownership, few of them can afford the extortionate cost of going online and so rely on their smartphones for basic e-communication, such as e-mail or instant messaging services such as WhatsApp and its ilk. They will not read the Daily Nation or the Standard from their phones. And they are unlikely to spend money on the paper version either. Kenyan media houses have failed to find the most cost-effective way of converting their content - and the ads that go with them - to the rudimentary mobile platform available to the millions of Kenyans with mobile phones or smartphones.

The argument that the attempt by the Government to diversify the forms of advertising it will use to communicate with the people is a threat to media freedom is specious, at best. The Government has not said that news organisations cannot report the news; it has not said that media houses cannot broadcast. All it has done is to allocate less money to traditional print advertising. This is not a threat to media freedom; it is merely a threat to media houses' profits. The Government has not made new rules about what can and cannot be reported, has it?

The media was all in support of austerity by the government to ''trim the wage bill" and reduce "government wastage." Even if the savings from advertising amount to only a hundred million shillings, this is not money that many Kenyans will sneer at. It is a sum that can buy ambulances or seeds or something useful that the people can use. If the media houses/news organisations want to keep making fat profits, they have the same decision to make like the government - what are they going to do in order to be more effective and boost profits? Maintaining a white-knuckle grip on government advertisement is not the way to go. Just ask the Washington Post Company which has been shuttering foreign and domestic bureaux since before 9/11.