I was reading the book Korea Witness which is a compilation of various stories from journalists that have covered Korea over the years. One of the chapters is written by long time Korean journalist Donald Kirk who provides some insight into an anti-US military article from Rolling Stone reporter Kevin Heldman that if you do a Google search for it you will see just about every left wing, communist rag has the article featured on their website.
This hit piece article was written back in 1996 and is full of so many holes that it is not worth even getting into because it would take me all day to type up the rebuttal, but it is interesting to find out the background details about how the article came about:
Billy’s successor, Jim Coles, liked so much to please he had a habit of opening his mouth far too much for his own good. When a reporter for Rolling Stone came around in 1996 looking for a sure-fire negative article, Coles showed how much he was into it by taking the guy around to GI bars, then hustling a couple of girls into a hotel room. True, the reporter "protected" his source to the extent of identifying him as "Public Affairs", but the story, when it appeared on the web, fleshed out by graphic descriptions and anti-army quotes in just about every sentence, was enough to end Coles’ dream of another tour showing eager correspondents around his favorite haunts. [Korea Witness - Pg 269]
Jim Coles was a civilian working for USFK that took Heldman around Itaewon and gave the grain of truth to the distortions in Heldman’s article. There are many more interesting anecdotes like this about events in Korean history, the journalists that served there, and articles written about the place that makes this book so interesting to read.
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9:32 am on October 26th, 2007 1
I’ll have to read that book.
I remember coming across that article a year or so into Korea back in the late 1990s and thinking it sounded like dramatic fiction.
Later on, when I went back looking for it again a couple of years ago to put on the anti-USFK/US Newsletter site, I had seen the Stephan Glass-New Republic movie (Broken Glass) that reminded me of this USFK hit-piece. It was just too over the top to believe. A reporter would have had to cream his pants to run into something that perfect to report — just rolling waves - wave after wave - of perfect stereotypical bad GI Joe stuff coming to him…
http://usinkorea.org/issues/kmag/index.html
That is the review I did of the article.
I think you got one part wrong. At least it is different from what I found…
Rolling Stone is where the “reporter” was working at the time, but they turned it down and the reporter wasn’t there much longer after that —- I think he spun it as he left RS rather than the other way around…..but he wasn’t around after that piece was turned down - from what I remember…
The “reporter” then found a home for it at Noam Chompsky’s place ZMag.
I think if you read some of the guy’s earlier work, it also reads EXACTLY like the kind of stuff Stephan Glass and now this new guy (Scott Thompson Beauchamps) were writing — stuff that sounds like some high school later-teen with some (immature) writing talent sat down and imagined what would make a great fictional “news” essay for some English class assignment.
Sometimes when something seems to good to be true —- it probably isn’t……
9:33 am on October 26th, 2007 2
I think that movie might have been entitled Shattered Glass…pretty good if not thrilling movie. Can’t wait to see the Beauchamps sequel…
12:44 pm on October 26th, 2007 3
Get the book is quite good for anyone who really follows Korean affairs. When I first read the guys article as well I was sure is was greatly exagerrated as well. It was the same thing I thought when I first read Beauchamp’s articles.
It is simply a writer writing something to meet what the publisher wants and expects. Publishing the truth would mean it does not get published. Writers earn paychecks and get recognized for what gets published thus they write what fits the publishers agenda.