African Stream’s Response to NBC

                                                     Response to NBC News

NBC News reporter Marquise Francis wrote to us at African Stream implying that we are spreading misinformation to “target Black audience” (sic). He didn’t cite any examples, but we politely gave him the courtesy of response regardless. 

Please read below to see his two emails and our response.  

Emails from Marquise Francis 

First Email

Good afternoon. My name is Marquise and I’m a reporter with NBC News. I am working on a writeup on a forthcoming report that takes a deep dive into online networks that, it claims, targets Black audience with misinformation and includes your company. I am reaching for comment about whether you feel as though this is an accurate or inaccurate statement of the work that you all do and how you would like to respond to critics that say you share misinformation to that hurts Black communities. Additionally, I would love to include how you would characterize the work that you all do. I have a Wednesday 10a EST deadline and thank you in advance for your time.

Best,

Marquise

Second Email

One update: my deadline is Tuesday 10a EST, not Wednesday. Thanks in advance.

African Stream’s Response

Hi Marquise Francis,

Thank you for your email and for allowing us to respond. However, you should accurately indicate what we are accused of to respond adequately. It would be more in line with customary practice to lay out the allegations in detail with examples of what you mean by ‘misinformation’ and allow us to respond to the examples you cite. You have not done that. Instead, you sent us two emails. In the second email, you moved the deadline for us to respond from Wednesday to Tuesday at 10 am EST, which gives us less than 24 hours.  Again, this is not customary practice, but we will deal with it as professionals.

But firstly, to avoid any ‘misinformation’ on your behalf, you misspelt our media name:  we are not ‘Africa Stream’ but ‘African Stream.’ Now, the misspelling of our name suggests to us one of two things: a) You have not done your due diligence about our company (which would explain why you could not cite any examples of our supposed misinformation in your email), or b) This assignment was handed to you hastily, most likely by a white supervisor who wanted you to do the hit piece because it looks better optically if we are attacked by someone who looks like us or, as Malcolm X once brilliantly stated: “They will pay one of us to kill one of us just to say it was one of us.”

 Let’s answer your questions as directly as we can. You describe us as an online network that “targets Black audience [sic] with misinformation.” You are half right, although you mean Black audiences plural, not audience singular. We target Black audiences, although we prefer the term ‘African’ to ‘Black’. We do this because we are a Pan-African digital media platform covering affairs concerning Africans at home and in the diaspora. Consequently, we cover events in countries ranging from Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil, Jamaica to the United States.

Our team is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and we are run and staffed by Africans, including veteran journalists with expertise in regional and local politics. We present an authentically African perspective, unlike media outlets like NBC News, which represents the view of the American establishment that seeks to economically control and plunder Africa.

Now, on to your more serious and defamatory allegation that we spread misinformation. Not sure how you do journalism at NBC, but at African Stream, we ensure that our journalists follow the basic principles of Point, Evidence, Explain (PEE). Simply put, if you are to make a point like you have here, claiming we are spreading misinformation, then you need examples to back up your point (something you have failed to provide) and then, finally, to explain how your examples back up your point. You need to drastically improve on two of the three fronts. 

However, we will still attempt to answer your allegation as simply as we can. No, we do not spread misinformation. 

We have a vigorous fact-checking process, which means work is checked by three different trained journalists three times before posting on our platforms. Of course, like all news media, we occasionally make mistakes, but we issue a retraction when that happens. However, this has happened only a few times because of our thorough verification process. Again, if you have found any information that we have posted that is not factual, please let us know, and if we agree with your findings, we will issue a retraction of the post and take it down.  Now, we are transparent about our political perspective. Are you open with your audience at NBC about your political leanings and who and what you represent? We must admit we don’t follow your site closely, but what does filter through to us comes across as propaganda for Joe Biden’s Democratic party in the U.S and the U.S military–industrial complex, which is the opposite of what the media is supposed to do: hold truth to power. We are based in Kenya and have been covering all of the protests against William Ruto’s government following the imposition of the IMF-backed 2024 Finance Bill. We are putting ourselves at risk to hold truth to power in the country in which we are based. Have you done the same? We notice that Julian Assange has just been set free after five years in Belmarsh’s maximum security prison in the U.K., battling extradition to the United States for exposing U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. We noticed NBC’s sit-down interview with President Biden on 26th November 2020. You didn’t ask him a single question about Julian Assange. How come? Since you are concerned with misinformation and protecting journalism, why not ask about the most famous journalist locked up at the request of the United States to the one politician who could have released him with one executive order? Since you are concerned with misinformation, you would know that WikiLeaks has an impeccable record, better than African Stream’, as they, unlike us, have never had to retract a story. Yet you don’t bring up the case of the Wikileaks founder to the most powerful politician in the world. What was the purpose of your interview? Was it to ask the newly elected President Joe Biden tough questions or to bask in the glory of his recent election victory? 

You see, we cover U.S. politics too, but following the radical pan-African tradition of criticising both the Republicans and Democrats, to paraphrase Malcolm X again, both parties are enemies of African people worldwide, including Africans in America. If you check our page, you will see that Trump is as criticised as Biden. A look at your page reveals that, sadly, criticism of Biden is woefully missing. Is supporting, funding and arming a genocide against Palestinian children not worth criticising? Or the fact Joe Biden has received over $5.2 million in support over the last 34 years from Israeli lobby group AIPAC, more than any Congressional recipient, according to OpenSecrets? Have you ever raised the question of whether this is why he is continuing to arm Israel despite pending cases by the ICJ and ICC against Israel for genocide and war crimes? 

Please respond to these questions by Friday at 10 am East African Time. We hope we have satisfactorily answered your questions.

Kind Regards,

Ahmed Kaballo

CEO & Founder, African Stream