Red faces over ‘tone-deaf’ Africa ad

The international editor of The New York Times has admitted he approved a job advert for African correspondents that contained cliched descriptions of the continent. It called for reporting from ‘the deserts of Sudan and the pirate seas of the Horn of Africa, down through the forests of the Congo and the shores of Tanzania’. A report on the Citizen TV site notes that the ‘tone-deaf’ ad was heavily criticised on social media. ‘We are currently looking for three correspondents to cover Africa and I saw this as an opportunity to find the best there is,' Michael Slackman said. ‘But I plead guilty to taking a short cut: Rather than write a new job description, a posting from about 18 months went out. I gave it a cursory look, and approved it. Mea culpa.‘ He appealed to the public to judge the newspaper on the quality of its reporting across the continent, rather than on the advert.