By Prudence Minayo
He is among the few journalists who never seem to be affected by the numerous job redundancies witnessed in most media houses.
Citizen TV political reporter Francis Gachuri has been with the station for over two decades and has come to be known for his incisive stories. He continues to command relevance and this has seen the reporter being promoted as you will see elsewhere in this article.
Age
He was born on 23rd December 1980.
Education
Gachuri attended Senior Chief Koinange High School which is a mixed school in Kiambu. He then proceeds to Moi University.
Career
The newsman started his career at the Royal Media Services owned Citizen TV. He has remained at the station to date. Kenyans always love a good political story and this is exactly what he has been delivering for years as a senior political news anchor. Even president Uhuru Kenyatta acknowledged the journalist in an interview he held with him.
According to an article published by Business Today on 18th July2018, he was among the journalists Mediamax Network Ltd Editor-in-chief Peter Oponda was eyeing to join his team. There were talks that he was set to become the managing editor at K24.
However, this did not happen as he was promoted at his current station. He rose from a senior political reporter to a political editor. In this role, he is charged as the head of all political coverage for the station both in English and Swahili.
Despite having fans, political reporters also get a lot of enemies who sometimes do not agree with their coverage. Francis has fallen under the hands of such people before and he was assaulted by unknown goons in 2017 at the Wipers headquarters. According to an article by Nairobi News, Gachuri and NTV camera person Jane Gatwiri were attacked by the goons who accused them of biased coverage during the elections. Apparently, the attackers invaded the meeting venue looking for Citizen TV crew members accusing them of biased covering of the elections and helping Jubilee to rig. He said he forgave them for what they did. Well, this is just one of the hazards that come with the job.
Currently, he hosts a political show on Citizen TV at 10PM every Thursday alongside Linus Kaikai, Yvonne Okwara and Jamila Mohammed where they talk about current political affairs in the country. They have earned themselves the name news gang.
Family
The Citizen TV political show host met his wife while in high school. They studied in the same high school but did not date back then and only started seeing each other after he graduated from Moi University. Francis and his wife joined the school on the same day; same class and they completed high school the same year. They dated from 2006 to 2008 before getting married during on Valentine’s day (14th of February 2009) and have been together since then growing to become good friends who respect each other. He is the father to three children: Sandra Marcus and Curtis. The three children penned him a sweet message after he was attacked, which he shared on Twitter.