Former New York Times reporter and Howard University professor Nikole Hannah-Jones has long been controversial as a writer who expressly rejects objectivity and neutrality in journalism. That was most evident in her “1619 Project,” which was ridiculed by historians and law professors in claiming that slavery was the driving force behind American independence. Nevertheless, the project was awarded the Pulitzer Prize despite glaring historical errors. Yet, this month, Hannah-Jones is back on the pages of the New York Times again rewriting history. This time, she is praising cop-killer and 1960s revolutionary Assata Shakur (left).
Hannah-Jones has been a lightning rod in her writings, from declaring “all journalism is activism” to spreading conspiracy theories against the police. Yet, mainstream media, including the Times, has run interference for Hannah-Jones, including the dean of the University of North Carolina trying to shut down criticism by reminding a reporter that they must all defend Hannah-Jones.
Hannah-Jones’s latest project of historical revision is a sorrowful memorial to Shakur, which shows the same disregard for facts in favor of a preferred narrative.
Born JoAnne Deborah Byron (and later adopting the names of Joanne Chesimard and Shakur), the violent revolutionary was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. In 1977, she killed New Jersey police officer Werner Foerster, 34, a U.S. Army Vietnam veteran who left behind a widow and a young son. She later escaped prison and fled to Cuba, where she died earlier this year. In 2005, she was declared a domestic terrorist. In 2013, the Obama Administration put her on the most wanted list.
You would know little of that from the New York Times column. After all, all journalism is activism, according to Hannah-Jones, and, if the facts do not fit the narrative, the facts have to go.
In her column, Hannah-Jones seems to dismiss the conviction as the result of an “all-white” jury. What is omitted is that Shakur had a long and violent criminal record. She was previously shot in the stomach during what was believed to be a drug-connected crime at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan.
She was sought in other crimes, including a 1971 bank robbery. When asked, Shakur later shrugged off such crimes as a type of racial reparations: “There were expropriations, there were bank robberies.”
She was also linked to a grenade attack that injured two police officers after being identified by witnesses. In 1972, she was identified by Monsignor John Powis as one of the suspects in the armed robbery at Our Lady of the Presentation Church in Brownsville, Brooklyn. During the robbery, the priest was told “We usually just blow the heads off White men.”
She was also tied to the murder and ambushing of police officers for years before she was stopped on May 2, 1973 on the New Jersey turnpike by State Trooper James Harper who was backed up by Trooper Werner Foerster in a second patrol vehicle. The resulting shootout left Harper wounded and Foerster dead.
Her trials spanned a variety of charges ranging from bank robbery to kidnapping to attempted murder, and other felonies. However, while there were acquittals and a mistrial (due to a pregnancy) on different charges, she was ultimately convicted of murder before her escape.
Yet, the Times and Hannah-Jones brush over that history to gush about Shakur and the effort to shield her, even describing the criminal network as akin to the famed system used to free slaves before the Civil War: “Shakur had been hidden in the United States for several years by a sort of Underground Railroad.”
The Times column bewails how “freedom came with shattering costs for her and her family.” Not a single line of sentiment for the widow and son that her victim left behind in New Jersey, let alone the other victims in murders and attacks that she was connected to as part of the Black Liberation Army.
Of course, such sentiment is not allowed for true victims. For example, Hannah-Jones was again published by the New York Times, warning in a column that memorials to Charlie Kirk are “dangerous.”
Hannah-Jones has also chastised other writers for covering shoplifting stories because “this is how you legitimize the carceral state.”
Yet, the New York Times is still actively involved in projects to rewrite history with Hannah-Jones. This is the same newspaper that barred columns from Senator Tom Cotton for arguing for the deployment of National Guard troops to quell violent riots, but published columns by “Beijing’s enforcer” in Hong Kong and a University of Rhode Island professor who previously defended the murder of a conservative protester.
It is the same newspaper that forced out a variety of editors who published opposing viewpoints or challenged biased coverage and journalistic activism.
The Times column ends with a line that is breathtaking in its ahistorical and amoral message: “Shakur, who saw herself as an escaped slave, died free.”
A convicted murderer and wanted terrorist died in one of the most blood-soaked, repressive regimes in the world . . . but Hannah-Jones and the New York Times want everyone to know that she “died free.”
That is comforting. As for Werner Foerster, he just died and was not mentioned once by name in the Times column.
Darn It: we must elevate the lawless, past or present, they were and are the ones put upon by those malicious No-Gooders, a Democratic Leftist may say.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is nothing more than a DEI joke. And the NYT is a facilitator and partner in that joke.
Murderers aren’t jokes.
Everyone, have a lucky new year.
I am sorry/not sorry this a.m. to sip a morning beverage and check in to read the good professor’s latest posting and attendant commentary, –only to see multiple, multiple comments from our dear friend and fellow commenter “X” “George,”- who,- first thing in the morning, found the time to spend discrediting, discounting, and criticizing Professor Turley. Yet Again. and Again.
The first thing I saw from X/George was this:
“Professor Turley’s odd fascination with Hanna-Jones and her writing, which is certainly controversial and award-winning, seems to have a little bit of jealousy sprinkled in.”
Really? (one cannot help but think, what is X/George’s “odd fascination” with Turley?)
Even in the most hostile and adversarial of court rooms, I cannot recall ever witnessing such relentless, bitter, deep-seated rancor and pretentious superiority/condescension as that of X/George.
-And the really sad thing about it is that X/George does not speak from a position of equal knowledge, empirical wisdom, merit, position, or education/training. Instead, his “expertise” on a wide (-very wide…) panorama of topics comes from quick and selective Internet searches, (some of which he is a little too careless in paraphrasing).
What in the world is triggering such pretentious and inimical hostility?
Pray tell, X/George. Why not move to a site more accommodating and synchronous with your positions? Why do you come back for more? Curious minds want to know.
Lin,
Great comment and excellent take down of the slow and dumb one!! Well done!!!
This curious mind does not want to know or really care. Generally it is best to just scroll past. Nothing the slow and dumb one says is really worth reading or even considering.
Lin
It’s not hard to see george/X has no life except here.
What a shame.
I grant that racial tensions were very different then, but none of us have forgotten, and we sure don’t need juvenile nitwits like Nikole (or her cohort at the Wastepaper of Record) to explain to those of us who were alive then. Also, heaven forbid we focus on progress instead (oh the irony, ‘progressives’). The ignorance and privilege are stunning.
Does the modern left have *any* heroes who weren’t/aren’t clinically insane? Shouldn’t this tell us something about them? 🙄
James,
I would add we dont need Nikole to re-write or gloss over parts of history. If you are going to tell/teach history, it has to be it all, the good, the bad and the ugly.
As to the leftists, well, the lionize antifa, defend criminal illegals and demonize the actual victims or ignore them like Laken Riley, and recall how they lost their minds when DOGE exposed all that fraud, waste and abuse? Like, they wanted to keep it going or something.
James,
Also of note, Minnesota governor, Tim Walz is now declaring investigations into all that fraud going on in his state is “white supremacy.”
Walz blamed “white supremacy” for the targeting of Somali-linked childcare centers, which appear to be front companies.
Tim Waltz calls fraud investigation” white supremacy”
pic.twitter.com/lq03GdPPEU
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) December 29, 2025
Meanwhile, Bondi announces 60 people have been convicted of fraud in four Minnesota scams so far
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/bondi-announces-60-people-have-been-convicted-fraud-four-minnesota
And now,
FIRST SIGNS OF MASSIVE POTENTIAL SOMALI FRAUD IN COLUMBUS, OHIO
The first Somali-affiliated daycare facility that we knocked after landing in Columbus, Ohio today did not answer.
A neighbor across the street told us, “I’ve never seen nobody come out the building or go in the… pic.twitter.com/zywy9lPDMw
— Muckraker.com (@realmuckraker) December 30, 2025
Yeah, I was just reading about it with Hussain and Mohammed arrested for wire fraud. Recruiting kids for autism. The housing guys both getting kickbacks etc. Abrego garcias 3 children have autism and the pipe man was autistic-like. Wonder if they were recruited.
I’m interested in the mucky mucks who were watching the store at HHS, MEDICAID, etc. These arrests are small fries. Biden’s 10% kickbacks from every cabinet? Anyway, we know the reason autism isn’t on the rise.
Bonti, California, has dropped his 4 billion suit for high speed rail. Newsom is looking for high speed rail investors now.
Have a lucky new year
James, shouldn’t it tell us something about them? Ms. Jones is a victim of the white man’s system. Life put them in a white man’s world and they’re doing damage on their way out. Pretty much it.
Have a lucky new year
Asshat Shitkur
An IQ of 60, portrays herself as a slave in America where everyone has the opportunity to make it as far as their own intelligence supports them. She used her social injustices as a mask for her racist hatred and murderous psychopathy.
If Obama had a daughter…
That’s the way it is when you live in your own private Idaho (Mind).
Hannah-Jones will grow old, retire, wither away and eventually pass-on like all of us do.
Her publications may take up 6 inches of space on the Library Bookshelf or a few Megabytes of drive space in the Data Center Cloud.
Her prodigy will have moved on and forgotten about her life. In not so much of a ripple of time.
She’s a legend in Her own Mind. But then aren’t We all?
Hoping you and your have a Happy New Year Mr. Turley… and thank you again and again for your reports… My opinion, Nikole Hannah-Jones readers are not the same as those who appreciate your writings… my concern is that more of her readers are becoming a louder voice. The “providers” are becoming overtaken by the “takers.” God Bless you~
Cuba is what trump might have described as a “sh*thole country.” The minute you get off the plane you are assaulted by an unbearable stench of unchecked pollution. It makes me happy to think that this cop killer had to breathe that stench every day of her worthless life.
The New York Times has not changed its essential nature since it covered up the Ukrainian genocide in the 1930s. It sympathizes with any entity or person that seeks to destroy Western civilization and the United States in particular. Any enemy of freedom is a friend to the spirit of the NYT.
It amazes me how much misinformation about the story gets spread by people who don’t take the time to read it.
The NYT has an annual series dedicated to historical, cultural, or influential individuals who have passed away titled “The Lives They Lived”. It was an obituary essay by Hanna-Jones about one person she believed was worthy. Turley is criticizing an obituary because it doesn’t mention the name of the cop who was killed and the various alleged crimes Assata Shakur committed. Never mind that her story is actually pretty interesting, and the claims against her are actually disputed by the facts of the case against her. Things Turley “neglected” to mention because he wanted to characterize Hanna-Jones as disingenuous while being quite disingenuous himself.
It seems Professor Turley is merely parroting the criticism from another conservative author miffed at the lack of recognition for the state trooper who was killed and the various crimes she allegedly committed. He’s complaining that her obituary doesn’t lay out all the facts about Shakur. Turley is just making a petty grievance about some facts left out of an obituary that he seems to insist should be included because…reasons.
Hey X – no one disputes that she killed a cop. Now shut the F up, you damned idiot.
She was convicted of murder – case closed.
Right. And an article on Hitler would omit WW2.