New York Times Refuses To Apologize To Dennis Itumbi And Uhuru Kenyatta Over Their ICC Article

Since mid-last week a New York Times story done by James Verini has elicited a lot of interest in Kenya.

Given that the story covered ICC, the Kenyan cases, focusing on Louis Moreno Ocampo and the Kenyan President, it was expected many would want to read and there would be quite a huge reaction.

The article elicited a harsh response from the now defunct PSCU while it had Itumbi threatening to sue the newspaper for saying he was under investigations by the ICC. Both parties demanded an apology and a retraction of the statements. However, the New York Times has stuck to its article and issued a statement dismissing any apology and retraction demands.

Here is the unedited version of their statement

“In a June 24 statement sent to Kenyan journalists, the communications office of President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya took issue with an article by James Verini in the June 26 issue of The New York Times Magazine, appearing in print with the headline ‘Trial and Error’ and published on The New York Times’s website on June 22 as ‘The Prosecutor and the President‘.

The article concerns the International Criminal Court’s failed attempt to prosecute Kenyatta on charges related to the violence that followed Kenya’s 2007 presidential election.

In the statement, the office suggested that the author of the article had not contacted Kenyatta’s office for comment. This is untrue.

Verini attempted on numerous occasions over the course of months to solicit comment from Kenyatta’s office through official communications channels.

Verini’s efforts included numerous emails, phone calls and text messages to Kenyatta’s chief and deputy spokesmen and two other aides.

On two occasions, representatives of Kenyatta’s office briefly answered or returned phone calls and suggested the possibility of further response, and on one occasion they scheduled a meeting to discuss the article with Verini, but the meeting was canceled, and responses to emails, phone calls and text messages eventually ceased entirely.

Throughout this process, Kenyatta’s representatives were informed of the subject of the article and did not at any point address it.

A fact-checker for The Times Magazine also emailed Kenyatta’s chief spokesman and received no response.

The statement also took issue with the article’s reference to Dennis Itumbi, the director of digital innovations and diaspora communications in Kenyatta’s office.

Itumbi’s investigation by the International Criminal Court is a matter of public record. As Verini’s article notes, he was not charged.

The Times makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of what we publish. Verini’s article was based on extensive interviews with dozens of sources in Kenya, The Hague and elsewhere and thousands of pages of court records, and was reviewed by editors and fact-checkers.

While The Times conscientiously corrects any factual errors that we learn of, we have not at this point found anything to correct in this article, and we continue to believe it is both accurate and fair.”