Kenya Coach Martin Keino Slams CNN Doping Report On Athletes At World Championships

A world famous Kenyan athlete and coach slammed CNN on social media Thursday after the international news network suggested that he was associated with doping athletes. Martin Keino, the son of Kenya’s Olympic legend Kip Keino, denied the claim suggested in a report on two Kenyan runners who failed drug tests at the world championships, and said CNN also falsely reported that he has coached various world champion athletes.

“CNN gets it wrong again,” Keino wrote on Twitter, posting a picture of the CNN headline. “I have never coached any World Champion athletes or associated with doping athletes.”

The younger Keino, a coach and former pacemaker for track and field and cross country running, has actually spoken out against doping in recent weeks and said it’s an urgent problem that needs to be tackled immediately in Kenya. Some athletes knowingly dope but others “have no clue” that they are taking a banned substance, he said earlier this month during an interview with BBC Focus on Africa’s Akwesi Sarpong.

Some Kenyans have already expressed their outrage over the CNN report on social media. “So CNN you have just defamed Martin Keino? Why can’t you people get facts right? I am willing to help,” one Kenyan posted Thursday on Twitter.

This is not the first time CNN has angered Kenyans. The American network’s coverage ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Kenya in July described the East African country as a “hotbed of terror.”

“President Barack Obama is not just heading to his father’s homeland, but to a hotbed of terror,” read a CNN online article, which was followed by similar television coverage and a tweet from the news network’s Twitter account, according to the Washington Post.

The hashtag #SomeoneTellCNN began trending among Kenya’s active Twitter community, with scores of comments blasting the Western media station for misrepresenting their country. While Kenya has suffered a number of deadly terror attacks by Somali militant group Al-Shabab, Twitter users stressed that Kenya does not resemble parts of the world where terrorism is commonplace.

A senior CNN executive traveled to Kenya’s capital Nairobi earlier this month to apologize for the channel’s coverage, according to the Guardian.

“We acknowledge there is a widespread feeling that the report annoyed many, which is why we pulled down the report as soon as we noticed,” Tony Maddox, a CNN executive vice president and managing director, said in a statement. “It wasn’t a deliberate attempt to portray Kenya negatively, it is regrettable and we shouldn’t have done it. There is a world at war with extremists; we know what a hotbed of terror looks like, and Kenya isn’t one.”