Book By Former New York Times Stringer Exposes History of Racist Concoctions Long Before Jayson Blair Scandal - Author's Demand For Times Apology For Racist Africa Lies Ignored

Book By Former New York Times Stringer Exposes History of Racist Concoctions Long Before Jayson Blair Scandal - Author's Demand For Times Apology For Racist Africa Lies Ignored

New York, NY (PRWEB) June 12, 2004 -- In an explosive book, The Hearts of Darkness, How White Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa, (Black Star Books $12, ISBN 0-9740039-0-5 available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com and Black Star Books) the author, a former freelance reporter of The New York Times, reveals that decades before disgraced serial plagiarist Jayson Blair was born, lies and concoctions by reporters and editors were routine at the so-called paper of record.

The book contains exclusive documents obtained from The New York Times own archives to reveal that the only difference with the Blair scandal was that the liars and plagiarists in the early era were white.

"Last year when Jayson Blair's ugly lies were exposed many of my media colleagues commented something to the effect, 'Here we go again.' Another Janet Cooke scandal putting a stain on all Black journalists," recalls the book's author, Milton Allimadi. "My own reaction was, 'It's about time The New York Times got caught.'"

Cooke was the Washington Post reporter whose concoctions in 1980 were so good that they won her the Pulitzer Prize.

Allimadi says he was disappointed last year when the Times pretended that the Blair scandal was unique. The newspaper published a long apology and referred to the incident as a low point in its 150-year history. By doing so, the Times failed to dismiss the widespread notion that Blair's falsehoods were committed because he was a Black reporter.

"My research for The Hearts of Darkness showed otherwise," Allimadi adds. "It showed that Blair had illustrious predecessors, if that term can be attached to serial liars. Moreover, I alerted the Times about my discover when I completed research for the book in 1992. They acknowledged receiving it in writing."

Research for The Hearts of Darkness, which was finally published as a book only a few months ago, began in 1991 while Allimadi attended the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. At Columbia, Allimadi's research paper won the prestigious James A. Wechsler memorial Scholarship Prize in 1992. Responding to a copy sent to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., then managing editor Joseph Lelyveld wrote that Allimadi had discovered crude and ugly concoctions from the Times past.

Allimadi says he was always frustrated by the persistent Tarzan image of Africa so he started his research to find out the mindset and personal feelings of the early journalists covering Africa. "The negative images these writers created still affect contemporary writing about Africans and people of African descent," he says.

At the Times, Allimadi unearthed dusty unopened files that contained personal letters from as early as the 1950s that were exchanged between reporters sent to Africa and the Times editors here in New York. "I was shocked by the intensity of the racism expressed in those letters which made the hair on my skin rise," he recalls. "And what makes them interesting, from a journalistic point of view, is that the ugly views expressed in the letters are identical to what was later printed in the Times purporting to be news articles. Some of those stories were concoctions."

For example, when the late Homer Bigart, who had already won two Pulitzer prizes, was sent to cover de-colonization in Africa, he wrote to Times foreign editor Emanuel Freedman, his true feelings:

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, Bigart wrote, referring to Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president and Pan-African hero. I vastly prefer the primitive bush people. After all, cannibalism may be the logical antidote to this population explosion everyone talks about.

On January 31, 1960, the Times published on January 31, 1960, a news article that Bigart may have concocted from his hotel room in Lagos, Nigeria, under the contemptuous headline "Barbarian Cult Feared in Nigeria."

In the news article, Bigart expressed the same disdain contained in his personal letter: 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 wrote, and later added, 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.

Rather than admonish and withdraw his reporter from Africa, foreign editor Freedman, heaped praises, writing in a letter to Bigart dated, March 4, 1960: 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? The latter reference was to the fact that the Times cost a nickel in those days.

Allimadi found in his archival discoveries that the concoctions were not limited to Bigart and Freedman. Sometimes, editors even concocted incidents and racist scenarios in Africa and inserted them into news articles without the reporters knowledge, Allimadi's book reveals.

In The Hearts of Darkness, Allimadi points to the case of Lloyd Garrison a descendant of the famous abolitionist. While based in Nigeria as the West Africa correspondent, in a letter dated June 5, 1967, Garrison rebuked his editor for concocting out of thin air a scene depicting savagery in Nigeria.

The reference to small pagan tribes dressed in leaves is slightly misleading and could, because of its startling quality, give the reader the impression there are a lot of tribes running around half naked, Garrison complained, in his letter. Tribesmen connote the grass-leaves image. Plus tribes equals primitive, which in a country like Nigeria just doesn't fit, and is offensive to African readers who know damn well what unwashed American and European readers think when they stumble on the word.

Garrison questioned why his editor would concoct the image of savages dancing around the fire.

Allimadi notes that in 1992, he proposed an Op-ed article in the Times to address their ugly past African coverage and the concoctions, but it was declined. "Ironically, the Op-ed editor at the time was Howell Raines, who last year lost his job as executive editor after the Jayson Blair scandal," he notes.

After Columbia University, Allimadi interned at The Journal of Commerce and The Wall Street Journal before reporting as a freelancer for the Times. He was deputy editor of the Black investigative newspaper, The City Sun, and when the Sun shut down in 1996, he launched The Black Star News in 1997. He used savings and seed funding from Bill and Camille Cosby. The book publishing wing of the company debuted in 2003 with The Hearts of Darkness.

Allimadi says even though he sent his book to the book review editor at the Times, in addition to the publisher, the newspaper never reviewed it. In a recent letter to Allimadi, a Times editor, William Borders, called his book interesting and acknowledged some of his concerns.

"Yet the Times has never expressed regret for the Africa concoctions even though the newspaper published a full-spread apology about the Blair debacle, and recently addressed shortcomings in its coverage of the Iraq war," Allimadi notes.

"I am still waiting for the Times to do the right thing and apologize for the lies and concoctions about Africa," he adds. "When published in a major newspaper like the Times, which sets the trend for most print and broadcast media in this country, the negative impact cannot be underestimated. Even if the Times refuses to apologize, The Hearts of Darkness proves that liars and plagiarists come in all colors."

The Hearts of Darkness, How White Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa, is available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com or Black Star News/Books at (212) 481-7745.

For speaking engagements contact the author at the same number or via milton@blackstarnews.com

Colleges and teaching institutions are eligible for 40% discounts on orders of 10 books or more. Black publications can purchase 10-chapter serialization of excerpts of the book for $25 per article. Also visit www.blackstarnews.com

PRESS CONTACT: Milton Allimadi, 212-481-7745, milton@blackstarnews.com