NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AFRICAN JOURNALISTS:

Fighting prejudice against African Journalists

By Eyobong Ita

photo courtesy of The Ohio State University

Through phone and personal contacts, the story has been depressingly familiar: Many African journalists can’t secure journalism jobs in the United States.

Their experience does not seem to matter. Numerous colleagues I respected and admired during our journalism days in Nigeria – and many from other African countries I’ve met in the States – have had to settle for other jobs, such as nursing assistant, security guard and cab driver. I was no different during my early years in the States. Despite spending three years as a daily sports reporter, and covering several international assignments in the United States, Scotland, Ivory Coast and other countries, I couldn’t get a journalism job in the States. Instead, I had to wash dishes in a Greenbelt restaurant in Maryland, made pizza at a nearby comedy club, and worked as a nursing assistant in several nursing and assisted living homes.

Colleagues with a lot more experience than me have found it very difficult – and often impossible – to secure journalism jobs in this country. Many recruiters, editors and others in management positions in the mainstream media wouldn’t give them a chance. They are simply prejudiced against African journalists not trained in the States. To them, the journalism standard in Africa is too poor to produce good reporters.

The prospects have been so bleak that many people (obviously with good intention) advised me to give up journalism and stick with nursing, where they said pay was often higher, with job security. But I never stopped writing. While working as a nursing assistant, I worked for no pay as the Washington, D.C.- area correspondent for an African newspaper. For three years I worked for the paper without a salary. It helped keep me sane, because I really didn’t like being a nursing assistant. There were no nursing homes in Nigeria, so you can imagine my discomfort when I had to give elderly people a bath or shower, dress and feed them, and clean them up when they had accidents. Once, a 78-year-old, six footplus female Alzheimer resident got angry with me for waking her for a shower in the morning. She slapped the living daylight out of me. I was taken to the hospital on a stretcher. Half of my face was swollen and I couldn’t work for the next couple of days. I longed to return to a newsroom. More than ever, I was determined to once again become a full-time journalist, as well as to find a way to help my fellow African journalists who were in the same plight.

At 32, I enrolled at Howard University. I was fortunate on two counts: I came to the States in my 20s and I did not have a college education. Many of my colleagues were much older with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, so going back to college here did not appeal to them. After five internships and a job at The Gazette , a Washington Post subsidiary, The Kansas City Star hired me as a reporter in 2001. I cover city government in eastern Jackson County. I was elated – but also knew that it was time to help my fellow African journalists.

On Aug. 7, 2004, during the Unity Convention in Washington, D.C., about 60 African journalists from all over the United States arrived at Howard University for the inauguration of the National Association of African Journalists (NAAJ). About 75 percent of our 200-plus members have not had any active involvement in the American media before NAAJ’s inauguration. A majority of them had not written a single story for more than a decade. Some had landed more lucrative jobs, while others were stuck in menial jobs they badly wanted to escape. But all still had a passion for journalism.

A few members of the National Association of Black Journalists were skeptical. They thought our new group would create a faction within NABJ. Some said there was no need to have another black journalism group serving black people. One African journalist at The New York Times told me that NAAJ was merely going to duplicate the efforts of NABJ and she would not join our organization. But as an active NABJ member and a vice president of the Kansas City Association of Black Journalists, I know that NAAJ complements, rather than duplicates, what NABJ does.

NABJ already has its hands full dealing with the issue of diversity in American newsrooms. Should we as African journalists expect the organization to start a campaign targeting prejudice against African-trained journalists when most NABJ members aren’t aware it exists? Should we expect NABJ to focus on fighting negative or unfair reporting about Africa when it is still fighting for balanced coverage of the black community here? Should we leave the fight against continuing persecution of journalists in many African countries to NABJ?

The answer to each question is “no.” African journalists in this country have specific issues that they need to take the lead and confront head-on. For instance, whites and blacks alike can inflict prejudice against African journalists.

Consider, for example, an African-American recruiter from a major daily newspaper who dismissed my interest in a full-time reporting position because “the standard of journalism in Africa was too low.” The recruiter acknowledged that she had never read an African newspaper, but she still said my 11 years of daily and other reporting experience in Africa as well as the United Sates did not count. Months later, I was hired by a different recruiter from the same paper. I had a similar experience with other recruiters, who dismissed my reporting in Africa as not relevant to American newspapers.

My personal experience and those of my former colleagues spurred me to form NAAJ to pursue several goals, including:

• Assisting African-trained journalists’ transition to the American media.

• Promoting balanced coverage of Africa-related issues in the mainstream media.

• Encouraging our members to write for African publications.

• Assisting with the training of our colleagues in Africa.

• Battling ongoing persecution of our colleagues in Africa.

At the National Association of African Journalists, we see NABJ as a worthy partner in our quest to resolve these issues. Three of the seven NAAJ Board members are NABJ members, which makes it much easier to rally our members to support some NABJ initiatives. For instance, in 2005 when NABJ raised funds to help defray funeral expenses for Akilah Amapindi, who died of malaria suspected to have been contracted during a broadcast journalism internship in Namibia , NAAJ called on its members to contribute. In February, as a journalism fellow at the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at Ohio State University, I organized the students to form Ohio State’s first student chapter of NABJ. And just recently, NAAJ supported NABJ’s call for a boycott of the Don Imus show over his racially insensitive and sexist comments against black players of the Rutgers University female basketball team.

Some NABJ members have helped to conduct or moderate some NAAJ workshops and we plan to explore joint initiatives with NABJ. An NAAJ committee has been set up to explore such ventures. Already we need NABJ’s support as we begin to protest the persecution of our colleagues in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia , Eritrea, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Gambia, the Sudan and other African countries where journalists are routinely harassed, tortured and killed for exposing or trying to uncover government corruption. It is a critical issue that should interest all journalists and other supporters of human rights and press freedom. Together, NABJ and NAAJ can make a real difference.

Eyobong Ita, a reporter at The Kansas City Star, is the founder and president of the

National Association of African Journalists (NAAJ), which has a chapter in the United

Kingdom. He is a 2007 journalism fellow at the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs at The

Ohio State University . He also is the vice president/print at the Kansas City Association of

Black Journalists and a former NABJ intern.

Journal, Summer 2007 | www.nabj.org | National Association of Black Journalists | 15