Author and Political Analyst, CNN Farai Chideya is a 27-year-old journalist and author whose scope goes from print to television, and from African-American issues to punk music.

Chideya embarked on a mission to destroy racial stereotypes with her 1995 book, Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African-Americans. Using statistics largely from government sources, she systematically undercuts the argument that African-Americans are at the root of problems like crime, welfare and drugs. She draws on anecdotes from her own experience as a reporter for four years at Newsweek magazine to illustrate how the media works, and offers ways that all Americans can better participate in the media, government, and society. Don't Believe the Hype, a Plume/Penguin publication, is now in its sixth printing. She is currently working on a new book for Scribner with the working title of The Color of America: How The Nation's Most Diverse Generation is Reshaping American Culture.


Chideya is a CNN Political Analyst offering commentary on the 1996 Presidential election and other topics. She appears on the network's other programming, including Talk Back Live and CNN & Company, and has appeared on other networks including ABC' s "Nightline", CBS' s "Up to the Minute", and BET'' s "Teen Summit" and "Town Hall Meeting on the Black Family."


Chideya is a fall 1996 Research Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center in New York City. She will examine why young Americans are tuning out and turning off the news.


Before joining CNN, Chideya was a political and music news writer at MTV News, which tailors its reports to inform America's youth. From 1990 to 1994, she was a reporter for Newsweek magazine in New York, Chicago and Washington. In the Washington bureau she covered national politics ranging from skewering Congressional pork to following the President as a pool reporter on Air Force One. As a freelance journalist, she has written extensively about music, books and trends for The Village Voice and Spin, among others. On the serious side, she's profiled white supremacists for Mademoiselle, examined child sexual abuse allegations for the Los Angeles Times, and written on affirmative action for The New York Times.

Chideya has won awards including a National Education Reporting Award (for a Newsweek story in the cover package about the "World's Ten Best Schools"), a Unity Award in Media (for a Newsweek story in a cover package on the black family) and a GLAAD Award (for a Spin magazine story on homophobia in hip-hop).

In her off time she wanders the streets of downtown NYC in search of cheap vintage clothing, cool contemporary artwork to stare at, and amusing anecdotes she can weave into fiction.