Joel Brinkley

Joel Brinkley won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1980. He currently teaches in the journalism program at Stanford University, a position he has held since 2006 after a 23-year career with The New York Times.

File:Joel Brinkley VOA.jpg

Brinkley speaking to a VOA Khmer reporter in 2012.

Background

Joel Brinkley is from Washinton D.C. and he received his education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Brinkley's career began when he worked at the Associated Press in Charlotte, North Carolina. In the year of 1975, Brinkley moved to the Richmond, Virginia Newsleader. It was here that he was able to cover national and regional governments, and he also covered the Ku Klux Klan and a leader who seemed to be reviving it whose name was David Duke. His career fluctuated and took him to different places until he ended up at the New York Times. When Joel Brinkley was at the New York Times, he had the position as reporter, editor and foreign correspondent. It was when he served as the foreign correspondent that allowed him to receive his Pulitzer Prize. Now that he is a teacher at Stanford, Brinkley is able to write a weekly op-ed column on foreign policy that is available in more than fifty newspapers and web sites that are not only national, but around the world. For the past thirty years, Joel Brinkley has not only been able to work in over 46 states, but he has also worked in more than 50 foreign countries. He has received more than twelve national reporting and writing awards. Brinkley has also written three books, and he is working on his fourth.

On January 29th 2013, Brinkley published an article entitled: Despite increasing prosperity, Vietnam's appetites remain unique in which he claimed: You don't have to spend much time in Vietnam before you notice something unusual. You hear no birds singing, see no squirrels scrambling up trees or rats scurrying among the garbage. No dogs out for a walk. In fact, you see almost no wild or domesticated animals at all. Where'd they all go? You might be surprised to know: Most have been eaten.

The article attracted unanimous criticism though Brinkley responded saying: I was traveling in Vietnam in late December and early January, and this is what I saw with my own eyes, first hand. And this is what the people I interviewed told me. On the issue of meat and aggressiveness, perhaps that was not as well phrased as it should have been.

To date, despite accusations of racism being added to highlighted inaccuracies, neither Brinkley, nor the publisher, the Chicago Tribune, have apologised.

Career at Stanford

As a teacher at Stanford University, Brinkley teaches the following classes:

• COMM 199: Individual Work
• COMM 274: Public Issues Reporting II
• COMM 291: Graduate Journalism Seminar
• COMM 299: Individual Work
• COMM 399: Advanced Individual Work
• COMM 247: Modern History and Future of Journalism
• COMM 147: Modern History and Future of Journalism
• COMM 290: Media Studies M.A. Project
• COMM 289: Journalism Master's Project

Controversies

Joel Brinkley wrote a controversy op-ed that was published by Tribune Media Services on 2013-01-29 about Vietnamese's appetites, saying that Vietnamese's high protein diet is the reason why "Vietnam has always been an aggressive country." The article generates outrage from people who has traveled to and lived in Vietnam. Readers of the article unanimously agree that it was filled with falsehood and fallacies. They also raised question about his credibility and whether he's suitable for his job as a professor of journalism at Stanford University. On 2013-01-31, Joel Brinkley offered a reply to readers, defending his opinion, which also received many comments pointing out inaccurate facts he used. One of the comment said his "article was outrageously ignorant, full of false assumptions, and offensive."