In a News Analysis piece (7/11/09), New York Times reporter Adam Nossiter attempts to illustrate the difference between some African countries and more enlightened nations, writing:

The gulf separating the West and many African leaders on fundamental issues like human rights was on display just last week. The African Union announced that it would refuse to cooperate with the International Criminal Court in its attempt to prosecute the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity, over the mass killings in Darfur.

Whatever you think of the ICC's pursuit of Al-Bashir (some human rights observers thought it an unwise move), is enthusiasm for the International Criminal Court really a good test for whether a country is really similar to "the West"? If so, then the United States of America, with our history of determined opposition to the court,  would not seem to meet the test for membership in "the West" either.

It was surprising to see that critical scholar Mahmood Mamdani's new book (which is largely about debunking Western notions about Darfur and genocide--something he discussed on CounterSpin) got a positive review in the New York Times (3/30/09).

Today (4/3/09) the paper sort of apologizes, in an editor's note (only in the print edition, so far):

The Books of the Times review on Monday was about Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror, by Mahmood Mamdani, a professor of government at Columbia University. The review was written by Howard W. French, a former reporter for the New York Times who is now an associate professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and does not know the author. But had editors known of Mr. Mamdani's affiliation with Columbia at the time the review was assigned, the review would not have been assigned to a member of the Columbia faculty.

That has the sound of a rule that is bound to be applied selectively; it's hard to imagine that book reviewers do not occasionally have professional or (more importantly) social connections with the authors they are reviewing. In this case the two don't appear to know each other at all, which might lead one to conclude that a positive review of a politically controversial book was the real problem.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof issued a call in his column today for pundit accountability.

After making a problematic argument about knowledge and experience being overrated, Kristof correctly pointed out that in the media, “the marketplace of ideas for now doesn’t clear out bad pundits and bad ideas partly because there’s no accountability," and he concluded his article with a call for action: “Hold us accountable!”

Does this mean Kristof will now acknowledge the error of his prediction last month that the president of Sudan would not kick out aid groups in Darfur if the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest?

As Julie Hollar recently noted on the FAIR Blog, Kristof had encouraged the ICC warrant, writing (2/26/09) that fears of such retaliation were "overblown."

But Sudanese president Bashir has indeed followed through on his threat, lashing out in exactly the way many other experts--including Julie Flint and Alex de Waal (Guardian, 7/13/08)-- had predicted. Yet as Hollar noted on the FAIR Blog, Kristof didn’t “acknowledge his error and continue[d] to dispense advice” in his subsequent (3/4/09) column on Darfur.

Nor did he acknowledge the error in his latest (3/8/09) Darfur column.

Perhaps it's time to heed Kristof's call to action.

(Kristof's email address is, by the way, nkristof@nytimes.com, and the email for letters to the Times editor is letters@nytimes.com. Kristof also has a blog where concerned readers can post comments.)

The New York Times' Peter Baker reports today (3/18/09) that Obama has tapped "a Swahili-speaking retired Air Force officer who grew up in Africa as the son of missionaries" to be his special envoy to Sudan.

Does Baker or his Times editors realize that they don't speak Swahili in Sudan? It's like reporting that Obama appointed a French-speaking envoy to Germany, and meaning it in a flattering way. Sure, they don't speak French in Germany, but they're both in Europe, right?

Baker also writes:

The latest crisis began March 4, when the International Criminal Court in the Hague charged Mr. Bashir with seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the slaughter of 300,000 people in Darfur, the first such indictment of a sitting head of state by the tribunal.

But Baker is conflating violent and non-violent deaths. The ICC prosecutor only accuses Bashir of causing 35,000 violent deaths; the rest (there's no exact count, but most estimates put them at over 200,000) have died of war-related causes like disease and hunger. And most of the victims died in the first few years of the war; humanitarian aid succeeded in dramatically reducing death rates in Darfur to the point that they were "far below the emergency thresholds."

Deaths are deaths, but it's important to make that distinction between violent and non-violent deaths, particularly in the context of a piece that gives a lot of ink to Obama critics who long for the days when Clinton called for a no-fly zone over Darfur and Susan Rice pushed for urgent military planning to "stop the dying." The piece closes with the executive director of the Enough Project asking whether Obama would "force" Bashir to let humanitarian aid groups back in or simply "accept talking about the situation and seeing if that's enough."

When you understand that the dying had been dramatically reduced using diplomacy and humanitarian aid, and when you understand that the attempt at "forcing" via an ICC indictment led to the explusion of much of that humanitarian aid, you might reevaluate the idea that "talking" is less desirable than "forcing."

Just last week (2/26/09), Nicholas Kristof, who has written often about the situation in Darfur, was rooting for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, as a step towards "help[ing] end the long slaughter and instability in Sudan":

Next Wednesday, the International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

That would be historic--the first time the court has called for the arrest of a sitting head of state. It would be the clearest assertion that in the 21st century, mass murder is no longer a ruler’s prerogative.

There has been concern that Mr. Bashir will lash out by expelling aid workers or that Sudan’s fragile north/south peace agreement will become unglued if Mr. Bashir is ousted. Those fears are overblown. Time and again, Mr. Bashir has responded to pressure and scrutiny by improving his behavior and increasing his cooperation with the United Nations and Western countries.

Got it: Bashir would never expel aid workers in retaliation for the international community trying to arrest him, even though he keeps saying he will, and a lot of experts think he'll follow through.

Let's check in with Kristof again this week, now that the ICC did what he wanted:

One of Mr. Bashir’s first actions after the arrest warrant was to undertake yet another crime against humanity: He expelled major international aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee and the Dutch section of Doctors Without Borders. In effect, he is now preparing to massacre the Darfuri people in still another way, for Darfuris are living in camps and depend on aid workers for food, water and healthcare--even as deadly meningitis has broken out in one of the camps.

"The consequences are going to be dire," notes George Rupp, the president of the International Rescue Committee, on which 1.75 million Sudanese depend for water, sanitation, education and healthcare. “If Sudan persists in this decision, it’s difficult to see how the outcome will be anything other than serious suffering and death for hundreds of thousands of people.”

So the political move Kristof pushed for is now most likely going to result in serious suffering and death for hundreds of thousands of people the columnist is trying to "save." Yet Kristof doesn't acknowledge his error and continues to dispense advice: Obama should "insist" that Bashir reverse his decision. And what sort of leverage does Obama have for that, now that the ICC card has been played? It would appear to come in Kristof's step two: "Destroy one of Mr. Bashir’s military planes with a warning that if he takes his genocide to a new level by depriving Darfuris of food and medical care, he will lose the rest of his air force."

Alex de Waal, who has much more expertise on the Darfur situation than Kristof, thinks the ICC warrant was a pretty bad political decision:

The ICC is a terribly bad instrument of pressure, because (a) the pressure can never be removed and (b) pressure only works if the end point to which the pressure is applied can be accepted by the party being pressured. The ICC indictment meets neither of these criteria.

Independent journalist Julie Flint agrees:

The immediate future for Darfurians is a sharp decline in the remarkable humanitarian work that has reduced mortality rates to near-normal levels in the aftermath of the massacre years of 2003-04. Where’s the justice in that?

Unfortunately, astute observers like de Waal and Flint don't have the same media platform as interventionists like Kristof.

Consortium News' Robert Parry (3/5/09) uses New York Times do-gooder Nicholas Kristof as an example of blatant corporate media hypocrisy:

Kristof--like many of his American colleagues--is applauding the International Criminal Court's arrest order against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for his role in the Darfur conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives....

By all accounts, Kristof is a well-meaning journalist who travels to dangerous parts of the world, like Darfur, to report on human rights crimes. However, he also could be a case study of what's wrong with American journalism.

While Kristof writes movingly about atrocities that can be blamed on Third World despots like Bashir, he won't hold U.S. officials to the same standards.

Most notably, Kristof doesn't call for prosecuting former President George W. Bush for war crimes, despite hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush’s illegal invasion of their country. Many Iraqi children also don't have hands--or legs or homes or parents.

Kristof is far from alone though--as Parry notes: "No one in a position of power in American journalism is demanding that former President Bush join President Bashir in the dock at The Hague." In fact, even the most modest attempts at accountability invariably are met by big media jeers; see the FAIR Action Alert: "CNN Scoffs at White House Critics: Anchor With Bush Ties Dismisses Abuse-of-Power Hearings as 'Stagecraft'" (7/31/08)

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."