Going undercover to interview Cara Anna from Associated Press

A not unamusing email exchange that reveals big media's disdain for truth and for African lives

Cara Anna is the Associated Press reporter who spread, all across the world in numerous respectable newspapers, the fake news that some 800 church-goers in the holiest place of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity had been cornered, dragged into the central city square, gunned down and eaten by hyena.

This background information is provided just in case you missed the section “Do we know what happened in Axum?” within my 50,000-word piece “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”, soon to come out in book form.

Also rather shockingly, she got away with it without any mea culpa or stain on her reputation that we know of.

Whether she initially believed in her own Axum massacre story, there is no way to tell, but it is clear that, no less than eight days later, she knew that her key witness account, which she had validated in no uncertain terms, was made up.

Instead of eating humble pie, she went on to write many more atrocity stories based on anonymous sources. The Pulitzer Center website presents her thus: “Cara Anna is the East Africa correspondent with The Associated Press. Her team's Pulitzer Center-funded coverage of Ethiopia's Tigray conflict was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Ethiopia's government barred her from the country. The team also won the AP's top journalism award in 2021.”

She probably thinks she can continue to escape scrutiny, as long as she avoids nosy journalists like me. It would be a waste of my time to request an interview with her, so I went undercover with nothing but a gmail account and an AI-generated portrait.

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Meet Fernando Silva: a non-existent Chilean film student.

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From: Fernando Silva
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2024, 15:53 (Ethiopian time)
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

Thank you so much for your amazing work, which has inspired my dramatized student film project. I am referring to your groundbreaking reporting from Ethiopia for Associated Press on February 18, 2021, when you revealed in shocking detail that some 800 church-goers in Axum, Tigray, Ethiopia, had been cornered, dragged outside, gunned down and eaten by hyenas. My reaction to reading it was: “How come nobody made a movie about this before?”

I have been searching for some original documentary footage of the dead bodies, the burials or the like, but have yet to come across any. Could you perhaps point me the way? Otherwise, given your prestige with many prizes to your name, naming you as my source for this true-story script must be enough, don’t you think?

Thanks once again, and hoping for your reply.

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva, film student from Chile

From: Anna, Cara
Sent: February 15, 2024, 16:34
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Fernando, thank you for asking and for being interested. It was very hard to get any images from a region where telecoms were cut. We often relied on people who physically left Tigray. Have you tried Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, who also published reports based on their own interviews?

Cara

AP

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 15, 2024, 17:41
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

Thank you very much for your prompt response! I will go carefully through all the documentation of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and only come back to you if I have any questions after that.

Yours sincerely
Fernando

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 19:47
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Dear Cara Anna.

I have now carefully studied the Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch reports on the Axum massacre. Your and the human-rights organizations’ reports coincide on the dates and the perpetrators, but not on the location, also not on the description of what happened, certainly not in any of what I was going to use for my film script, that is, the 800 church-goers getting cornered, dragged out, gunned down and eaten by hyena, as told in your first article on February 18, 2021, and subsequently retold in The New York Post, The Sun, The Independent, The Times, etc. 

Sorry, but can you clear up my confusion? Were there two separate events? Should I give up my script along the lines of your report from February 18, 2021?

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva.

From: Anna, Cara
Sent: February 21, 2024, 19:51
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Fernando, that’s very much up to you, especially since you’re looking for footage from a time when basic communications and other services like electricity were cut in parts of Tigray and many people had difficulty just keeping their phones charged. Having enough for a film sounds challenging, but perhaps contacts in the Tigray diaspora can help now that the war is over and it’s easier to reach people and share information.

Cara

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 20:22
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Cara Anna.

Okay, thanks, but I don't want it to be up to me, but up to the evidence. If I present it as a true story and it turns out not to be so, I will be accused of slandering an African nation.

You did your report by talking to people in Axum over the phone, and so did the Amnesty researchers. From my own little research, I know that Axum is a fairly big, modern city with tens of thousands of smartphones and also many generators, powerbanks and what not. Yet even the Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reports have no footage revealing anything noteworthy, nor has anybody come up with anything since, at least not online. Moreover, Amnesty says the festival on November 30 was called off, which makes sense if up to ten dead bodies were being stacked on each cart for mass burials on November 30, 2020, as the Amnesty report says. But then I found an Ethiopian television report from the festival , and it is definitely that exact festival from November 30, 2020.

Never mind, it is YOUR story and not Amnesty's that I care about. And after February 2021, there seems to be nothing about the 800 church-goers any more. Long question short: do you today have any doubt that your dramatic version of the Axum massacre is true or not?

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva

From: Anna, Cara
Sent:  February 21, 2024, 20:33
To:  Fernando Silva
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi, you reached out by looking for original documentary footage of what happened in Axum, and I encourage you to find what might exist. You’ll see that for months, media coverage and humanitarian reports along with some government reports noted a long and wide cutoff of basic services in Tigray that affected communications, utilities and the supply of basic items like food and medicine. Even land lines weren’t working in many cases. I do hope that with such conditions having eased, you’ll have much more success reaching people and accessing any footage captured in Axum.

Cara

From: Fernando Silva
Sent: February 21, 2024, 23:27
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Film script based on your reporting

Hi Cara Anna.

Okay, thank you for your prompt reply. But I can only take that as a "YES", you do have doubts if your shocking report that made it into headlines across the world is actually what happened.

Indeed, none of the factors you mention can explain a complete lack of photographic evidence, but I can and I will look more into it. And shouldn't you be doing that too? This is a big deal! Your report on February 18, 2021, made a huge impact on public opinion in the West and in Tigray too, stirring fear, hate, all the emotions of war. If those graphic details of insane savagery turn out to be a lie made up to justify revenge killings, and if you lent the trustworthiness of Associated Press to spread such dangerous disinformation, surely, your conscience would want to know and, if necessary, make you issue an apology, am I right? 

Yours sincerely
Fernando Silva

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Let me interrupt with some commentary:

Rather than answering the questions, Cara Anna trots out the half-truth about Tigray being cut off, which I have addressed at length in Part 3 of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”. All her focus is on not incriminating herself. This is why she neither defends the veracity of her story nor admits that it was a lie. Now she is being confronted with the common-sense observation that, surely, having a conscience requires her to care one way or the other.

So this is when she ends the exchange, which must have rattled her. Can anything lure her out of her shell again? Well, two weeks later, she gets this email from someone using the “Tigray genocide” hashtag as his avatar.

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From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 19:23
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Anna Cara.

I am Gabriel Teklehaymanot, I work in real estate in the UK, where I have also been involved in activism against the Tigray genocide. You know all about that, because you have covered it and your journalistic brilliance and integrity have been widely recognised, including by the Pulitzer people, I just saw online.

I was contacted some days ago by someone interested in informing the world about what our people went through. He said he had been in contact with you a little while ago. He is the one who gave me this email. Is it okay if I ask you for some advice here? Because I know your work, your time is precious to me too.

Regards

Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Mekete Tigray UK

From: Anna, Cara
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 19:27
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Hi Gabriel, thank you for reaching out. What advice are you looking for?

Cara

AP

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:25
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Cara.

Thank you for this opportunity to borrow some of your precious time.

Well, a young man from Chile, Fernando Silva, wrote me and we talked on the phone too, at length and on numerous occasions. He said you had suggested he reach out to someone like me in the diaspora for guidance. He was very confused and frankly a bit annoying, going into tiresome detail that I am not going to bother you with, but it came from a good place, as he cared about the Axum massacre, which he has scripted a whole film project around. This will be a great opportunity to raise conscience about what happened to our people. It may be an amateur production, but he is putting all his savings into it, and he has many volunteer actors lined up for this true-story drama, which might do well on Youtube. He even showed me how he plans to do the hyenas with blurry imagery of Chilean street dogs shot at night and some horrifying sound effects.

However, now he is having doubts about what actually occurred in Axum. He said you had suggested that we might have some original photographic material, to which I replied: “Hey, we do not always get to film it when we get killed! So YOU film it, Fernando!”

He objected that you had somehow not affirmed the deacon’s story in his email exchange with you. I am sure he has misunderstood something. The testimony of the deacon was accepted by many, many important newspapers and even corroborated by the honourable Lord David Alton speaking in the UK House of Lords as late as November 2022.

I have more arguments on the ready when he calls me, I think tomorrow, for why his script should stick to your first report on the Axum massacre. Yes, the perpetrators and their supporters have denied everything, of course, this is their evil nature and the reason we had to fight them. But nobody independent or important in the media has ever questioned your story.

I hope you can attest that I am in the right here, thank you. And please, let me once more express my utmost admiration for your professionalism and also thank you for your solidarity.

Regards
Gabriel

From: Anna, Cara
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:30
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Hi Gabriel, thank you for explaining. We didn’t discuss the deacon, and I did encourage Fernando to see whether footage might be available now that communications and services in Tigray have resumed.

Cara

AP

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:50
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

Dear Cara.
Ah, I see, well, with me he discussed the deacon and every little clue like he was Sherlock Holmes!  As for footage, I found some from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, but it is very different from what the deacon said, and none of it would persuade the sceptics that there was any massacre at all. Anyway, the deacon's testimony was at the heart of your story and it is what we have been telling our children and grandchildren within our community as a reminder to know who we are and who are enemies are. So I can understand he cares about verifying it, even if he is a little bothersome.

Should I advise him to make adjustment to his script? I made another argument, a completely different one, that seemed to work much better with him, but the best option for me would be to insist on there being enough evidence for the deacon's testimony for him to follow his script, so do you think I can do that?

Regards
Gabriel

From: Anna, Cara
Sent: Mar 6, 2024, 20:59
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Can I ask for some advice?

That’s your conversation with him, and I have no advice to pass along for that.

From: Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Sent: Mar 7, 2024, 14:55
To: Anna, Cara
Subject: Wonderful news!

Dear Cara.

Thanks for your time, yesterday, and I will not bother you anymore except to tell you this wonderful news:

I talked at length to Fernando Silva this morning, and he agreed to go ahead with his script as it is, except making it clearer that you are the one we can thank for knowing about it. I am going to raise more funds for the production, and I will personally go to Chile for a full week and be on set as his advisor, isn’t that great?

The argument that I had hinted at before is that Western media are free to shine a light on the truth, as you did throughout the war, but also to debunk whatever is found to be inaccurate. We are a society of free speech. And of checks and balances, because anyone can go to libel court, but nobody has done so in this case. What you reported from Axum was not trivia about, say a celebrity sleeping around. It was about, let’s remember, 800 people being ruthlessly mowed down in an affront both to humanity and to our Christian faith. Your revelation of a crime so unforgivable shaped the worldwide perception of the war. I can tell you that in my community, it showed us the evil of our enemy and strengthened our will to fight at whatever the cost. Glory to our martyrs!

So what I said to Fernando which finally convinced him is that, if a news organisation as reputable as Associated Press were to get it that wrong about something that serious, there would be big consequences. But there has been no retraction, and you are still working for Associated Press and considered a highly respectable journalist.

Which means your story stands and is perfectly fit for being dramatised, crediting the original author, you, the incredible Anna Cara, who will be mentioned repeatedly in gratitude for your investigatory work. Your name will live forever in the annals of spreading knowledge of the Axum massacre.

Once the film is out, and provided it is as good as it promises, can we count on your help to promote it? Most of all, we would love to interview you, is that okay? Must we submit a formal request for this to your employer?

I hope this happy news makes your day, like it did mine, and that our interview can be scheduled soon.

Happy regards
Gabriel

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Notice how both my fictional undercover personalities put an ordinary, very reasonable-sounding trust in the “respectable” institutions of the liberal world order, from our free-speech society to our human-rights bodies. This was myself until recently, and it would still be me today, had it not been my lot to realize how low they stooped in their insistence on getting Ethiopia dead wrong.

UPDATE on April 10: Two days later, a final message from Cara Anna did arrive, though I only discovered this a month later.

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From: Anna, Cara
Sent: Mar 9, 2024, 16:21
To:  Gabriel Teklehaymanot
Subject: Re: Wonderful news!

Hi Gabriel, thank you for asking, but there’s no need for me to take part. Now that it’s easier for most people to travel to Tigray, one can go and speak to people there who lived through it.

Cara

AP

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Cara Anna seems to believe the authenticity of the undercover personalities to the end!

And yes, as she says, one can go to Axum to ask around and investigate. Plenty of people and institutions have done that. Not a single finding remotely resembles Cara Anna’s story of February 18, 2021. I refer once again to my own work on what we know about what happened in Axum.

I left it here, as I published the exchange on March 30, 2024, having demonstrated sufficiently that Cara Anna is utterly shameless, and that Ethiopians were right to ban her from entering their country. If she had had the slightest conscience, she would have said: “Such a film wouldn’t be a true story, so now I am going to retract my article and apologize in public for the profound harm that I caused. I shall also come clean about my sources throughout the war, and about the extent to which I knew beforehand or only found out later that I was spreading incendiary falsehoods.”

Dream on, she will not say that of her own accord, because she and her employer have proved themselves indifferent to the truth and disdainful of African lives. We cannot expect these people to repent. We must work to hold them to account. And take solace from the fact that history will judge them harshly.