Except it’s not really clear what questions Ateba has been seeking to ask. His serial interruptions typically begin and end with a protest about how the press secretary hasn’t allowed him to ask his question.

In an exchange of emails this week, Ateba declined to say what information the White House has denied him. He also declined to meet for an interview or to speak over the phone about himself or his publication, Today News Africa, for which he appears to be the sole writer-reporter. He said he would respond to questions via email but then ignored most of those sent to him. He didn’t respond to follow-up questions.

After reading that, I really wonder what the process is to get credentialed. How did he get in? I went to the website, and I only found three authors on a quick scan of the different sections: Simon Ateba, Femi Adesina, and Noah Pitcher. Femi Adesina works for the President of Nigeria as well, and focuses on Nigerian politics. Noah Pitcher works for Kevin McCarthy (the Current Speaker of the US House), but his stories focus on West Africa as well.

The website looks busy but polished on the main page, but sloppy work becomes apparent quickly. They can’t seem to decide on whether or not they’re capitalizing links. The banner across the top is a straight rip of the New York Post. If you try to look up Adesina or Pitcher’s work, a few stories load but the “Loading” at the bottom never goes away. In the links at the bottom, they still have a “Test Page 2” Link! There’s also a strange subheading under the Health and Business Sections. Upon looking it up, it’s the beginning of a quote from Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther which leads me to believe it was a placeholder from their website builder that they never replaced or erased.

This certainly seems like a low-budget mouthpiece for a certain political view.