African journalist Simon Ateba, who tells Newsmax he hasn’t been called on by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to ask a question during press briefings in the past nine months, says he’s not surprised that The Washington Post would publish an article critical of him.
“I know that was sent by the White House and the White House Correspondents Association to assassinate my character,” Ateba said Monday on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “They are doing this because I’ve become extremely influential, reaching 200 million people on Twitter every 28 days and between 6 to 7 million people every day and they realize that they need to stop me.”
Ateba, who is from Cameroon, added that his White House credentials will expire on July 31, and “they don’t want the White House to renew it.”
He further said that he’s calling on The Post to retract its story and if that doesn’t happen, “we will take them to court.”
In its weekend article, The Post reports that Ateba demands attention during the daily press briefings by “interrupting to claim he has been overlooked” and that “it’s not really clear what questions Ateba has been seeking to ask,” as “his serial interruptions typically begin and end with a protest about how the press secretary hasn’t allowed him to ask his question.”
The Post also reported that The White House Correspondents’ Association had admonished Ateba last year when he was still a member of the organization.
“There is no right of any reporter to be called on by any official,” the association’s then-president Steven Portnoy of CBS News Radio wrote in an email to Ateba that was obtained by Mediate. “Preventing your colleagues from asking their questions is no way to seek relief.”
The Post further noted that Ateba declined to say what information he’s been denied or to speak about himself or his news site, “Today News Africa.”
He did, though, respond to The Post that his efforts “have been met with racism and discrimination from the left, as well as misleading articles that fail to address the underlying story of discrimination against me,” the newspaper reported.
Ateba told Newsmax that The Post’s journalist, Paul Farhi, “sent me very disrespectful and really foolish questions.”
“He asked me if I just wanted to be on TV,” said Ateba, adding that he’s been “kidnapped in Nigeria, [and] attacked by pirates [in] the Gulf of Guinea, [in] jail, you know, I’ve gone through it. I don’t need any attention and I don’t need to be on TV to be relevant.”
Ateba added that he also wasn’t called on when President Joe Biden received 50 African leaders in Washington, D.C., which he said was disrespectful not only to him but the “entire continent.”
“Africa has between 54 and 55 countries, depending on who you ask,” said Ateba. “When 50 African leaders come to Washington, D.C., to meet with the president, it’s almost like the entire continent of Africa has come to the city to meet with Biden. But the journalist covering Africa in the White House is not called on to [ask] questions when Biden is hosting the entire continent of Africa.”
Meanwhile, Ateba said African countries are losing respect for the United States with Biden in office.
“What you need to do is to listen to the president of Kenya,” he said. “They don’t want to use the U.S. dollar anymore for, you know, transactions within Africa. They want to dump the U.S. dollars. You need to listen to the president of South Africa the other day in France.”
This is because “people are losing interest and they are losing respect for the U.S. because the U.S. doesn’t respect them in the first place,” Ateba added. “When you fail to call [on], to respect the African journalist in the White House, you actually disrespect, not just for me before the entire continent and you are allowing the Chinese to become more influential and the Russians to expand their influence across the continent. And that’s really sad.”
