The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand expresses its deepest condolences to the family, former colleagues and many friends of John McBeth, a renowned foreign correspondent and former FCCT board member, who has died in Jakarta, Indonesia, after a recurrence of cancer.
Michael Vatikiotis, a former FCCT president and editor of the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review, writes: New Zealand-born John McBeth, one of Asia’s pre-eminent journalists with a record of scrupulous and ground-breaking reporting, has died after a short illness. He was 79. Over a career spanning more than 62 years, McBeth’s reporting helped shape events in countries including South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia.
I met John as a newbie correspondent at the Far Eastern Economic Review in the early 1990s. He was already a hero of mine. As an undergraduate in London, I pored over his stories in the Review in the university library. His riveting accounts of wars, coups and murky political machinations helped kindle my fascination for Asia that ultimately led me to live and work in the region as a journalist.
John was a blunt-speaking, “old school” reporter. His writing pulled no punches and influenced many of the region’s policy-makers over the decades. His clear explanatory style, often resistant to editing, made his articles easily accessible to locals and foreigners alike in countries where the truth was shrouded either by censorship or culturally driven opacity.
I remember a cover story in the Review on the central role of rich oligarchs in the politics of the Philippines that ran under the banner headline “Bossism”. We worked on many stories together in Indonesia around the fall of President Soeharto in 1998. As the protests erupted in Jakarta and troops fired on students, John sat at the keys of our old office desktop computers, bashing out simple but effective prose, while I hovered behind him, suggesting more complicated explanations that he sometimes graciously let me insert. It felt like playing a duet on the piano – he on the bass side of the instrument, me on the discordant black keys.
We were the most unlikely of friends, he would say. My more exotic background and elite British education often drove us to disagreement on broader issues. What we had in common was a devotion to Asia and to the pursuit of a good story.
John was born in Whanganui, New Zealand, the son of a Taranaki dairy farmer, Sandy McBeth, and his wife, Isla Dickenson. He attended New Plymouth Boys’ High School. He was fond of saying he had been a journalist for longer than any of us. His first job on the Taranaki Herald started in 1962 when I was four years old. He moved to the Auckland Star in late 1965. He remembered interviewing the Rolling Stones and covering the Beatles on their visit to New Zealand.
He had an early ambition to make his career in London’s Fleet Street, but when the cargo steamer he was on was grounded in Jakarta, he stayed. Stepping ashore, he immediately fell in love with Asia and never left. He took pride in being an Asian “lifer” – often chiding many of his colleagues who came to the region for a few years but never stayed.
After spending time in Jakarta and Singapore, McBeth settled for fifteen years in Thailand, where he worked for publications including the Bangkok Post, Agence France-Presse, United Press International, London’s Daily Telegraph and the Hong Kong-based Asiaweek.
McBeth’s early reporting from Thailand focused on the Indochinese refugee crisis and the Vietnam War, writing with passion about the plight of refugees and war victims. He wrote about the Thai pirates who raped and murdered Vietnamese boatpeople.
He was one of the first Western journalists to uncover the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror in Cambodia, often arriving at the border to interview survivors after a long and arduous overnight bus journey from Bangkok. In May 1979, McBeth joined the staff of the Far Eastern Economic Review, where he covered five coups, including the aborted one in Bangkok that killed his close friend, the Australian cameraman Neil Davis, in 1985.McBeth was a larger-than-life member of Bangkok’s hard-living and working international press corps, loving Thailand and its people. It was in Bangkok that he met his future wife, Yuli Ismartono, a foreign correspondent for Tempo magazine from Indonesia and the FCCT president.
He wrote analytical pieces and many exclusive reports from Review news bureaus he headed in Bangkok, Seoul, Manila and Jakarta. Whilst in Seoul, collaborating with colleagues Nayan Chanda and Shada Islam, McBeth broke the story that North Korea was developing a nuclear weapon.
While based in Manila, McBeth had a leg amputated, but he was determined that the setback would not impinge on his career, and he was soon back writing exclusives for the Review. Yuli helped him through his illness and restored his confidence so he could return to field reporting.
From the end of 2004 until early 2015, John wrote columns for the Singapore Straits Times, specializing in Indonesian and regional affairs. His work has also appeared in The National (Abu Dhabi), Nikkei Asia, the South China Morning Post, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist and more recently Asia Times.
McBeth’s 2011 book ‘Reporter: Forty Years Covering Asia’ included many of his stories. His 2016 book, ‘The Loner: President Yudhoyono’s Decade of Trial and Indecision’, reviewed the decade that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spent in power.
McBeth was a confidante of many of Asia’s diplomats, politicians and policy makers. He was a mentor and inspiration to many of the region’s journalists, particularly locals working for local publications, and railed against journalists whose writings failed to make clear what was fact and what was opinion.
[Lindsay Murdoch, former regional correspondent for The Age in Australia, contributed to the above.]
Paisal Sricharatchanya, a former FCCT president, Bangkok bureau chief of the Far Eastern Economic Review and editor of the Bangkok Post, writes: John was both a close professional colleague and a good personal friend for a large part of my working life. We started out at the Bangkok Post in the early 1970s – he as a sub-editor and I as a reporter. Later, we went our different ways in pursuit of new challenges and opportunities.
As fate dictated, we later came back to work together at the Thailand bureau of the Far Eastern Economic Review in the late 1970s, sharing the same Bangkok office with another illustrious foreign correspondent, Rodney Tasker. Together, we produced much sought-after stories on politics and economics.
I will remember John as a dedicated and illustrious journalist who would never give up pursuing important stories of the day. I will always remember him not just for the work we did together but also for the many, many happy moments we shared together at the bar of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand when it was at the Oriental Plaza and the rooftop of the Dusit Thani Hotel. Rest in Peace, my friend.
Pichai Chuensuksawadi, a former FCCT board member and editor of the Bangkok Post, writes: Like many journalists who were junior to him, I got to know John more when he was with the Far Eastern Economic Review in Thailand and later when he moved to Jakarta. Thank you, John, for your frank views, thoughts and advice. I will always remember you as the epitome of the lifeblood of any newspaper – a reporter.
Atika Shubert, “Recovering journalist. Writer-in-progress. Ex-CNNer” and daughter of Yuli Ismartono, writes: John was an exceptional reporter and a generous mentor to young journalists. But John saved his best role for the family: To us, he was Grumps, the grandfather with a big heart who filled our days together with laughter. This photo of John was taken by my son in Bali, where we spent so many wonderful summers together. This is how I will always remember him.
Funeral arrangements
A memorial will be held starting on Friday, 8 December, at Grand Heaven Funeral Home, Jl. Pluit Raya, Penjaringan, North Jakarta, for friends and colleagues wishing to bid a last farewell. John McBeth’s cremation will be held on Saturday, 9 December 2023 at 11am Western Indonesia Time.
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