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Writers Fabricating News to Denigrate Africa

The man whose name I was trying to remember is Allimadi. He's the one who published "The Hearts of Darkness" exposing "How White Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa." In researching African coverage at the New York Times' archives, the information at his disposal included correspondence between reporters and editors.

He discovered that the paper's foreign editors routinely suppressed positive reports from the continent that could not be changed to convey negative images. His research for instance, revealed how New York Times reporters, such as Lloyd Garrison, Homer Bigart, ... in the 1960s and Joseph Lelyveld in the 1980s, filed news stories from Africa for which editors routinely fabricated scenes and manufactured quotes, which conformed to the racist stereotypical biases that U.S. readers had come to expect in African reports.

Allimadi publishes The Black Star News, a weekly newspaper in New York City. For more information about Allimadi's research, his email address is miltonallimadi@hotmail.com

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Inventing Africa: New York Times Archives Reveal a History of Racist Fabrication

By Milton Allimadi
Extra! August 2003

When New York Times reporters such as Lloyd Garrison in the 1960s and Joseph Lelyveld in the 1980s filed news stories from Africa, editors at the Times routinely fabricated scenes and manufactured quotes for their articles. In some instances, the foreign editor colluded with the reporter to manufacture scenes that they believed would conform to the racist stereotypical biases that U.S. readers had come to expect in reports from Africa.

When I brought these examples of racist journalistic concoctions to the attention of New York Times editors more than 10 years ago, I was virtually ignored.

That's why recent assertions by Times editors that reporter Jayson Blair's concoctions and fabrications reflected a "low point" in the newspaper's 152-year history (5/11/03) were disingenuous. A much lower point had been reached in the 1960s, when the newspaper began covering Africa consistently, as I discovered when I dug up documents from the Times' archives in 1992.

At the time, I was a Columbia journalism grad student researching the evolution of the paper's African coverage. As nationalism swept across Africa in the early '60s, the New York Times sent Homer Bigart, the famous two-time Pulitzer-winning reporter, to cover the transition. In Ghana, Bigart wasn't impressed by independence hero Kwame Nkrumah, as a letter he sent to foreign editor Emanuel Freedman in January 1960 reveals:

I'm afraid I cannot work up any enthusiasm for the emerging republics. The politicians are either crooks or mystics. Dr. Nkrumah is a Henry Wallace in burnt cork. I vastly prefer the primitive bush people. After all, cannibalism may be the logical antidote to this population explosion everyone talks about.

When I first discovered Bigart's letter, I assumed that--even with the prevalent racism of the time--it reflected the ranting of one racist reporter. Then as I read the reports that Bigart filed from Africa that purported to be straight news reporting, I found a near-perfect correlation between the language he used in his letters and the feelings he expressed in the purported "news" reports. Bigart's favorite terms in reference to Africans included "barbaric," "macabre," "grotesque" and "savage."

Typical of his prose was an article published in the Times on January 31, 1960, under the headline "Barbarian Cult Feared in Nigeria." Focusing on a reported incident of communal violence, Bigart assumed a jaunty and derogative tone, writing: "A pocket of barbarism still exists in eastern Nigeria despite some success by the regional government in extending a crust of civilization over the tribe of the pagan Izi." He went on:

A momentary lapse into cannibalism marked the closing days of 1959, when two men killed in a tribal clash were partly consumed by enemies in the Cross River country below Obubra. Garroting was the society's favored method of execution. None of the victims was eaten, at least not by society members. Less lurid but equally effective ways were found to dispose of them. According to the police, about 26 were weighed with stones and timber and thrown into flooded rivers. No trace has been found of these bodies. A few were buried in ant heaps. But most became human fertilizer for the yam crops.

"Where else but the Times?"

Foreign editor Freedman shared Bigart's contempt for Africans and the assignment. In a letter to his African explorer, dated March 4, 1960, Freedman wrote:

This is just a note to say hello and to tell you how much your peerless prose from the badlands is continuing to give us and your public. By now you must be American journalism's leading expert on sorcery, witchcraft, cannibalism and all the other exotic phenomena indigenous to darkest Africa. All this and nationalism too! Where else but in the New York Times can you get all this for a nickel?

When the savages were nowhere to be found, Bigart and Freedman took matters into their own hands. As independence neared for what was then Belgian Congo, Bigart complained to Freedman in a May 29, 1960 letter from Leopoldville, which is now Kinshasa: "I had hoped to find pygmies voting and interview them on the meaning of independence but they were all in the woods. I did see several lions, however, and from Usumbura I sent a long mailer about the Watutsi giants." (Usumbura is a Burundi city now known as Bujumbura.)

The Belgian Congo had experienced the most bloody and brutal history of European colonial rule and exploitation in Africa. During the rule of King Leopold II, an estimated 10 million or more Africans were exterminated and countless more permanently maimed or disfigured, all in the quest for wealth.
African slave laborers who did not deliver their designated quota of ivory and rubber had their hands severed, to motivate other slackers. Yet Bigart and Freedman's utmost concern was to find pygmies to malign.

When he failed to find pygmies, Bigart did the next best thing: He concocted them, as indicated by his article published in the Times on June 5, 1960 under the derisive headline, "Magic of Freedom Enchants Congolese." The article began: "As the hour of freedom from Belgian rule nears, 'In-de-pen-dence' is being chanted by Congolese all over this immense land, even by pygmies in the forest."

"Independence is an abstraction not easily grasped by Congolese and they are seeking concrete interpretations," Bigart added, before continuing to denigrate the pygmies. "To the forest pygmy independence means a little more salt, a little more beer."

Continued concoctions

Was this some aberrant episode between Bigart and Freedman? Hardly. The Times tolerated concoctions so long as the newspaper could get away with it. Even when Times reporters complained, editors continued to insert concocted scenes and quotes into their articles.

Consider the case of Lloyd M. Garrison, a descendant of the great American abolitionist, who was the Times' first West African correspondent during the 1960s. Garrison covered the Nigerian civil war, but was expelled by the military regime for alleged bias in favor of the Biafran secessionists.

In a letter from Nigeria dated June 5, 1967, Garrison complained bitterly that "tribal" scenarios had been inserted into the edited version of his story, which had been published on May 31, 1967 in the newspaper:

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The editor who wrote his friend saying

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A Flair for Blair - Another Lying Journalist

EUR
April '04

In the tradition of infamous truth bender, ex-NY Times Jayson Blair, another journalist has exhibited a flair for deceit, laziness, and outright lies.

USA Today, the largest newspaper in the US, has lost its editor, Karen Jurgensen, after discovering stories she published by former foreign correspondent Jack Kelley were fabricated.

Kelley, 43, resigned on Jan. 6 after internal investigations revealed that he had fabricated most of the content of eight major stories, as well as schemed, plagiarized materials from other publications, lied in speeches, and deceived superiors who investigated his work.

Journalistic integrity really went out of the window when it was discovered that a part of the story for which Kelley received a Pulitzer nomination was fabricated. Jurgensen, 55, retired after releasing a statement of regret that Kelley's deception had not been discovered earlier, despite an anonymous tip from a staff member.