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FRAUD alert: Former SI writer apparently lied about his Marine exploits

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by poindexter, May 2, 2008.

  1. How it got challenged, I don't know.
    But I was at a lot of the same events as Pat, and he brought it up a great deal, especially in Seoul, where he was constantly joking about the security people being the "same guys" who'd beaten him up in the POW camp. It was a huge part of his identity.
    And, lest it be forgot, the man was a damn fine writer.
     
  2. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    http://www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/20080502_Revelations_about_boxing_writer_Pat_Putnam.html
    There are a whole collection of private citizens who take this stuff very very seriously.
     
  3. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    Maybe a boxing writer should check on this, just to back up the Web site operators' research?

    This is a reflection of one of the problems with the Web, blogging and bloggers -- not knowing, for sure, just who and what to trust, but still, letting them do the work for reporters.

    This is not a knock on all bloggers, and I have a sick feeling these ones are honorable, and, by extension, right in what they say they've found. But I hope others reporting this now have, in fact done some independent reporting.

    Bloggers just haven't been established long enough to have the credibility that mainstream-media reporters and their outlets have. Or, I guess I ought to say, the credibility that mainstream-media reporters should have.

    I also have to admit that, for me, this case brings up a concern I've had more times than I'd like -- usually after some high-profile screw-up, exaggeration or pretense of being somewhere they weren't -- regarding the really great writers and the biggest and supposedly best names in our business.

    I really think there is such a thing as being too good a writer, at least for journalism, which should be built more on reporting than writing flair, but isn't, always.

    It makes me wonder, sometimes, just how often it happens that somebody's writing is so good, and so admired, that it, and by extension, the writer, is just never questioned.

    It seems in many cases that we are just not very good at policing ourselves. And this is a bad thing when credibility is really all we sell.
     
  4. Jones

    Jones Active Member

    I can't speak for all military records, but the rolls of Purple Heart recipients (particularly those who received more than one -- and in this case, allegedly four) are unimpeachable.

    Sorry, jgmacg, but as far as that goes, there isn't much wiggle room. I hate to say it.
     
  5. If true - and I don't really see how anyone can honestly expect otherwise - this is intensely despicable.
     
  6. three_bags_full

    three_bags_full Well-Known Member

    I went through the Army's medical platoon leader course at Ft. Sam Houston this fall with a guy who claimed he'd been to a number of schools -- airborne, air assault, Ranger and several others -- but had not, and had not been to Afghanistan, like he claimed. His story was uncovered, and he went from a new lieutenant to a civilian with a dishonorable discharge.

    Despicable.
     
  7. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    Again, not defending Putnam, who I've never met, and not much read. Just trying to buy him a couple of posts' worth of patience on our part.

    I just find a great deal of what's being written in some of these stories improbable. Especially in light of lines like this:

    Just as many stories were written about Putnam's fighting background: A term in the Marines, four Purple Hearts and a Navy Cross, and a 17-month stint in a Chinese POW camp after he was captured during the Korean War. When he died in November 2005 at age 75, the Boxing Writers of America recognized that part of his life by establishing the Pat Putnam Award, for perseverance in overcoming adversity.

    Which carry no citation of which stories, when or by whom.

    The four purple heart thing, for example. To whom did he say that? In what context? Was it written about? If so, when, where, by whom?

    I'm not saying that Pat Putnam isn't the liar he's accused of being. It's a common enough phenomenon, certainly.

    I'm just saying that we seem to be rushing to condemn him on the strength of one cursory identity check performed we not how, by persons we know not whom.

    If I were going to level the same charges against a man in print, I'd have to have it sourced up one side and down the other.
     
  8. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    It's in SI's own website obit
    http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/more/11/28/putnam.obit/index.html

    Combat in Korea and multiple purple hearts.

    He is survived by a daughter, a son and four grandchildren. The daughter doesn't have the purple hearts.
     
  9. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    Where'd they get it?

    Who told them that? And when?

    Was it on Putnam's CV?

    How long had it been floating around?

    Why had he never been called on it before?

    Why wasn't it challenged as soon as it appeared anywhere in print?
     
  10. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    http://www.maxboxing.com/Katz/katz112905.asp

    Excerpt:

    In 1988, Sports Illustrated made him return to South Korea to cover the Olympics. Bob Arum introduced him to a Korean general in charge of that country's amateur boxing program.

    "Please turn around," Pat said to the general. "I want to see if I recognize you."

    He didn't talk much about it, but he was a genuine Korean war hero, a Marine sniper who received four Purple Hearts and the Navy Cross - a citation outranked by only the Medal of Honor. He thought the South Koreans turned and ran when over-run by the Chinese and that was how he spent 17 months as a prisoner of war.

    I asked him once how did he ever surrender. He looked at me coldly and said, "I was unconscious."

    He once let it slip that at one stage he was taken by train, a freight car I believe, deep into China. He thought he would never return. When he did come back, he weighed maybe 86 pounds. For the rest of his life, he refused to eat Chinese food - he said he had had enough of their maggots.
     
  11. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    Another obituary.

    Again, what's the source on the story? Putnam? Had Katz heard these stories from him? Or somewhere else?

    Slipshod reporting doesn't excuse further slipshod reporting.
     
  12. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    Except... we probably have to MOVE his grave from Arlington to Bumfuck Memorial Liars Mausoleum
     
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