Time's Alex Perry, the magazine's Africa bureau chief, responded in the FAIR Blog comments section to FAIR's Julie Hollar, who recently (FAIR Blog, 6/25/10) criticized Perry for neglecting to mention the U.S. and Belgium's role in propping up the Mobutu regime in Congo.

Perry said:

The idea that the U.S. created Mobutu and maintained him in power belittles Africans and is typical of the kind of racism that dogs analysis of Africa from commentators and journalists who get as close to Africa as, er, America, like old Julie here. The U.S. did not create Mobutu. They certainly did support him. Equally, by backing Rwandan President Paul Kagame, they also helped overthrow him. The crucial dynamic here is support. Africans have been the main players in Africa since independence, and while outside powers have influence, that is all it is--influence and support....

As for this lame idea that I, and the "mainstream media", are part of some giant conspiracy to lie, cover up, dissemble etc. in the name of, I imagine, the "military industrial complex" or perhaps the CIA, what do you think happens here? Do you think I have a controller with a husky voice who directs my coverage by meeting me in badly lit subterranean car parks? Grow up. People who do my job die sometimes. I've known three myself. Do you really think we'd take those risk to tell lies? Your cheap and half-arsed conspiracies are insulting and infantile. I challenge any one of you--just one--to actually go and do some reporting in Congo, and then come back to me. Until then, your comments are pretty worthless.

Hollar responded to Perry’s comments:

Alex, were you in Africa when Lumumba was assassinated? One's physical location and experience obviously do not determine one's ability to speak with authority on historical events. I have in fact been to Africa, more than once. Assumptions make for sloppy arguments, as well as sloppy journalism.

Highlighting the U.S. and Belgian roles in Lumumba's overthrow and assassination and Mobutu's ascension is hardly racist, and pointing out your failure to do so is hardly conspiratorial. It doesn't take the CIA to produce bad coverage, it just takes a reporter who believes it's perfectly legitimate to write about "what's wrong with Africa" (specifically the "sucking vortex" that is Congo) without acknowledging the extraordinary Western role.

After Perry criticized Hollar for not contacting him for a "right of reply" to her post and saying that Hollar doesn't do journalism, which requires "actual reporting and travel," Extra! editor Jim Naureckas jumped into the fray, writing:

Alex, you misunderstand what we do here. We're not reporters covering the Congo; we're critics reviewing the work of journalists like you. If a writer for Time wrote a negative book review without calling the author to get a response, would that be a firing offense? If so, your magazine has a very odd ethical code.

As for a right of response--aren't you taking full advantage of it? Though I must say you could have made better use of it than complaining about the "invective" of a blog post while throwing around words like "racist" and "libelous." Julie's post was factually accurate--unlike your response, which accused her of never having been to Africa. When she noted that was wrong--not to claim any special expertise in the region, but to point out that you were making false assumptions--instead of apologizing, you come up with fresh insults. If you're trying to make a point about the superior ethics of corporate journalists, I suggest that you're headed in the wrong direction.

Here’s one more response from Perry:

And as for right of response--yeah, I'm calling you out now. Julie's piece was a shameless and crass piece of cant, and if she can't stand the heat, maybe she should exit a kitchen she seems to have wandered into by mistake. The bigger point is, as you know full well, you're supposed to give me a right of reply at the time, in the piece. It's only by chance that I came across Julie's piece. I give that chance to everyone I report on by contacting them, even if it's for a review. Not that odd at all, not that you apparently know that.

Finally, Julie's piece was not factually accurate. Congo did give the world Mobutu. He was Congolese. He came from Congo. He ruled it for 32 years. To suggest he was formed, shaped, maintained and only ever a puppet of the U.S. is a gross inaccuracy, and, as I say, a racist one: prejudiced against Africans for assuming they never control their own destiny, prejudiced against the U.S., for assuming it's always some shadowy bad guy.

You can read the full discussion between Perry, the FAIR staff and other commenters here.

NBC reporter Ann Curry's fawning interview with actor Ben Affleck (NBC Nightly News, 5/19/10), about his celebrity activist work in the Congo, is downright embarrassing:

CURRY: Why do you pick the place that people think is actually one of the worst places in terms of the number of atrocities, in terms of the level of suffering, one of the worst places on Earth?

AFFLECK: I really do see tremendous hopefulness. I'm really moved by the power of folks to find solutions to their own problems. The Congolese sense of kind of strength and self-sufficiency and resilience.

CURRY: And he's seen it in four trips since 2007.

AFFLECK: They're rebuilding the engine.

CURRY: Realizing local organizations can make the difference, hat in hand...

AFFLECK: I went to a lot of other folks who were experts and who knew a lot more than I did, and I said, `Can you help me?`

CURRY: ...convincing major philanthropists to fund his multimillion-dollar Eastern Congo Initiative so he can make efforts like Christine's.

AFFLECK: How long was the fighting with the...

CURRY: He's a policy activist in the making.

AFFLECK: There's almost no sort of law, judicial authority. You need to build some kind of a political constituency before policymakers take action.

CURRY: Boy, you come with a lot of passion. Boy! I'm like--I'm against the wall here.

AFFLECK: Sorry.

CURRY: If there was a wall back here--I mean, no, no. Don't apologize. You're so passionate about this.

Really, why would you pick One of the Worst Places on Earth as the focus of your activism? The Nightly News certainly isn't too interested in paying attention to such a place, as their story on Affleck marks the fifth segment they've devoted to the Congo in as many years. Two of those stories, by the way, were about gorillas. Sadly, this is par for the course for the Congo.

The video, which captures the moment even better than the transcript, is here.

The dominant story from Hillary Clinton's trip to Africa was not her comments about combating rape and sexual violence in Congo.  No, the top story was Clinton's testy response to a question about what her husband thought of Chinese business interests in Kenya Congo.

That exchange prompted a whole story in today's New York Times by Jeffrey Gettleman ("Clinton's Flash of Pique in Congo"). While that's already kind of sad, it turns out that the questioner misspoke; he actually meant to ask what Barack Obama thought of these deals. But either way, apparently, you get to psychoanalyze Hillary Clinton:

After the forum, her aides told the traveling press corps that there might have been a mistranslation, and that the student actually wanted to know the opinion of her boss, not her husband. But that interpretation did not dispel the controversy either, since it gave new life to the nagging question of whether Mrs. Clinton felt marginalized in the Obama administration.

See? If the question was really about Obama, you can take the answer she gave to the question about her husband and use it to gauge her true feelings about her role in the Obama administration. Neat trick.

Gettleman's piece concludes:

No matter the issues she was talking about--encouraging good governing, ending Africa's wars, lifting women up from their lowly position in a place like Congo. The interest in this trip, it seemed, was not about the problems facing Africa. It was about her.

As one journalist covering her trip put it: "She is a celebrity. We have a celebrity secretary of state. When you have a celebrity, you get celebrity coverage."

Well, it's nice to know that journalists covering U.S. foreign policy see their jobs this way.

There are two major conflicts in Africa that receive U.S. media attention. In Congo, it is estimated that 5 million people have died in a conflict that has raged for about 12 years. In the Darfur region of Sudan, estimates can range from 200,000 to 400,000. The Darfur conflict, though, has received much more press attention than Congo-- which serves to explain why Newsweek magazine would run a (short) article about Congo under the headline "Africa’s Other Holocaust."