CNN’s Africa Correspondent No Longer with Network

Overseas Blog Describes a “Date Rape Journalist” CNN Africa correspondent Jeff Koinange is no longer employed by the network, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday without elaboration. His departure comes after a blog in Kenya accused him of being “the Kenyan date rape journalist.”

The Kenyan-born Koinange “is no longer employed at CNN, and we are not commenting beyond that,” spokeswoman Christa Robinson told Journal-isms. “There are several different people who will fill in for the time being.” Koinange, who was based in Johannesburg, South Africa, could not immediately be reached for comment.

One Web site posted a purported March 3 e-mail from a woman to Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide. It says the woman sent Koinange a press release last August about her book on the killing of a minister in Kenya’s government. “Jeff replied immediately and proposed to have an interview with CNN in Atlanta and to present the book in Inside-Africa.

“Soon after he started to call me and things changed to very private and personal matters,” it said. A second Web site, apparently created by the woman in question, purports to show intimate and graphic correspondence between the woman and Koinange.

“PLEASE don’t be SORRY —- we’re in this together, YOU and ME ….. so let’s not start regretting anything ….” read one line attributed to Koinange.

In other postings, Koinange describes being in Darfur, Sudan, and other locations on assignment for CNN.

Koinange last appeared on CNN on May 17 on “Anderson Cooper 360°,” when he was in Darfur.
“We’re joined in the hour ahead with CNN’s Africa Correspondent Jeff Koinange, who has risked his life on many occasions to bring the countries of Africa, the reality of Africa, into our living rooms,” Cooper said.

The correspondent joined CNN in 2001. He quit his job as a flight attendant for Kenyan Airways and arrived at New York’s Kingsborough Community College in 1987, at 21, according to a bio on the college’s site. He moved on to New York University, ABC News, Medical News Network, NBC and Reuters Television.

“He has reported on major events from all across the African continent,” his CNN bio, now removed from the CNN Web site, says. Brian Stelter of the TV Newser Web site first reported Koinange’s missing bio shortly after noon Tuesday.

“Although Koinange is CNN’s Africa correspondent,” the CNN bio continued, “his journalistic talents mean he frequently reports from outside the continent. In 2005 he was part of CNN’s Peabody award winning team who covered the devastation wreaked on News Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. He has also reported from Baghdad on the post-war insurgency, reconstruction and the historic 2005 elections in Iraq.”

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