Michael's Dispatches
Andrew MacGregor Marshall, Former Journalist.
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- Published: Monday, 05 May 2014 14:50
A typical Marshall Facebook post:
Some say that Marshall was not always unhinged. Friends of mine previously read his work and complimented him, but they soon stopped.
As a war correspondent, Marshall was a failure. Not one piece of writing, not one photograph, not one video, survived the test of posterity. Marshall and I were covering the same war at the same time, and I did not know that he existed. I did read the work of other war correspondents. Despite my long periods in Iraq, I never noticed Marshall.
Marshall's greatest claim to fame is excavating the WikiLeaks cables courtesy of former US soldier Bradley “Chelsea” Manning, who received a 35 year prison sentence for his efforts.
After Marshall departed Baghdad, he dug into the stolen diplomatic cables pertaining to Thailand and he staked a claim as if he had discovered a new natural law. The WikiLeaks cables are available to anyone via a simple web search. Marshall contends that his interpretations and analyses of US State Department cables revolutionize the study of Thai society and politics.
Marshall does not tolerate those who disagree with his interpretations. He is infamous for combative conduct on social media.
Marshall has no evidence that the handicapped subject was a terrorist. This is a case of defamation atop mockery.
It is best to ignore stalkers, but given their prominence, a few must be addressed. In this case, Andrew MacGregor Marshall is an internationally known former news correspondent who published false and defamatory comments about my work and person at least a hundred times. If the publisher of Marshall's forthcoming book incorporates such commentary, a lawsuit could ensue. Fair warning.
In addition to being a former Reuters bureau chief, Marshall occasionally publishes on a freelance basis on CNN and Foreign Affairs. He is quoted in articles published on the BBC from time to time.
Stalkers are normally just individuals, but stalkers in the age of the Internet can be organized cheerleaders who orchestrate followers. For the purposes of this dispatch, a stalker is an individual or a group that doggedly pursues another, repetitively demanding acknowledgement, often stooping to character assassination.
Typical of Marshall’s followers, the poster below endorses violence against me because I am guilty of "smeering Yingluck and the reds in the cheapest ways possible." The bizarre thing is that Marshall and his followers claim that I malign the Reds when I observe that they use violence, when the Reds themselves often threaten violence, then extol the bloodshed in true Hezbollah style. For an independent writer to observe that the Reds employ violence when they wage politics is no smear. The fact is, the Reds murder people.
Marshall started off politely. He did not receive the reciprocal attention from me that he demanded. I read a bit of his work on Thailand and I found it dull, but I never said this publicly, or privately. I forgot his name until he began throwing temper tantrums in my direction, month after month, beginning in December 2013.
Marshall’s messages to me became abusive, to the point where I blocked him on Facebook. This is a rare step for me. It was a shame to see a former Reuters bureau chief conduct himself this way.
Marshall then whipped up a storm of like-minded, equally profane readers on his Facebook page and Twitter. Marshall and his fan club support terrorism. We have no common ground.
When he is not partying or insulting strangers, Marshall loves to talk about prostitutes, usually under the guise of journalism. Marshall will seize any pretext to publish images of bar girls.
Of course Marshall rationalizes his frequent use of bar girl imagery. My words are not intended to disparage bar girls, but to illustrate Marshall's behavior. Mentioning bar girls and Marshall in the same sentence is not fair to bar girls.
Marshall’s readers are different than most who come to my pages. Many of Marshall’s readers who reside in Thailand waste an inordinate amount of time talking about prostitutes and seedy topics. In short, many appear to fit the profile of what are called “sexpats” here, and they are very different from the expatriates and the Thai patriots on my pages.
Prostitutes are never far from the minds of Marshall or members of his fan club. Many of them cannot write two sentences without scratching readers’ eyes with obscenities.
To wit:
There is another Reuters journalist by the name of Andrew R. C. Marshall. Andrew R. C. Marshall recently shared a Pulitzer for work co-produced in Thailand. Both Andrew Marshalls worked for Reuters in Thailand. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Marshall is a different man. The former journalist Marshall who obsesses about bar girls is Scottish. Needless to say, this leads to confusion.
When Marshall first tried to communicate with me, I was busy in Turkey studying the Syrian war. Marshall wanted my endorsement for his forthcoming book, and he forwarded an excerpt. He did not directly ask for my endorsement but that was clearly his intent. I believe that he wanted a comment to include on his book jacket.
Marshall was a wage earner at Reuters for 17 years, including a stint in Baghdad, so he may have felt that professional etiquette required that I cease research on Syria, and pay full attention to his writing about Thailand, which he apparently did while residing in Singapore and Cambodia.
There are a thousand books that I would like to read by authors who have “been there and done that." There was no time to labor through a disjointed manuscript about Thailand from a vulgar expatriate who had not stepped foot in the Kingdom in years. I read a few pages and he lost me. Aside from his barroom research, most of Marshall's work is secondhand. There was no chance that I would endorse his book.
Individuals and organizations who have acknowledged or endorsed my work range from The New York Times, The Boston Herald, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, BBC, NPR, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, Bruce Willis, Gary Sinise, Joe Galloway, Tom Ricks, Michael Barone, General David Petraeus, Ripley’s Believe it or Not!, numerous scientific papers, the Smithsonian's Air & Space, many books, and a thousand others in dozens of countries and languages.
This is not to boast. My interest is in serious people doing serious work, not in a malicious former journalist who insults the handicapped and who cannot keep his mind and tongue off of dance poles. Through the wonders of social media, checking with people who know him leads to persistent allegations of drug use including methamphetamines and mushrooms.
Marshall published pictures of himself getting a tattoo. Former friends say he claimed to be on a quest for spirituality. He named himself “Zenjournalist.”
Marshall often attacks total strangers. Perhaps he does it for the accolades of taking on someone with a higher profile. Perhaps Marshall is a bully who enjoys picking on others who cannot fight back. Perhaps the bitterness of his divorce from Reuters and his exile in Cambodia are too much to bear. After Marshall lost his Reuters badge, doors did not open like they opened before. After all, the doors did not open for a party animal expat. They opened for Reuters. When Marshall lost his job, he lost access.
