Charles J. Hanley is an American journalist and author who reported for the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

(AP) for over 40 years, chiefly as a roving international correspondent. In 2000, he and two AP colleagues won the

Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting Pulitzer may refer to: *Joseph Pulitzer, a 19th century media magnate *Pulitzer Prize, an annual U.S. journalism, literary, and music award *Pulitzer (surname) * Pulitzer, Inc., a U.S. newspaper chain *Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a non-pro ...

for their work confirming the

U.S. military The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. U.S. federal law names six armed forces: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and the Coast Guard. Since 1949, all of the armed forces, except th ...

’s massacre of South Korean refugees at

No Gun Ri The No Gun Ri massacre () was a mass killing of South Korean refugees by U.S. military air and ground fire near the village of Nogeun-ri () in central South Korea between July 26 and 29, 1950, early in the Korean War. In 2005, a South Korean go ...

during the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

Early life

Hanley graduated from

St. Bonaventure University St. Bonaventure University is a private university, private Franciscan university in St. Bonaventure, New York. It has 2,760 undergraduate and graduate students. The Order of Friars Minor, Franciscans established the university in 1858. In ath ...

in 1968 with a journalism degree. In 1969–1970, he served as a U.S. Army journalist, including in wartime Vietnam.

Journalism career

Hanley joined the AP's

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...

bureau in 1968, returning there in 1971 after military service. In 1976, he transferred to the AP's international news desk in New York where he eventually became a roving international correspondent, reporting on subjects ranging from wars and summit conferences to climate change in the Arctic. In 1987–1992, he served as AP assistant and deputy managing editor.

No Gun Ri

In 1998, Hanley and reporters Choe Sang-hun and

Martha Mendoza Martha Mendoza (born August 16, 1966) is an Associated Press journalist whose reporting has helped free over 2,000 enslaved fishermen and prompted action by the U.S. Congress and the White House. She earned her first Pulitzer Prize in the Inves ...

, assisted by researcher Randy Herschaft, confirmed that the U.S. military massacred South Korean refugees – an estimated 250-300, the South Korean government later concluded – near

, South Korea, in late July 1950. The AP team had located a dozen U.S. Army veterans, witnesses, who corroborated the account of Korean survivors. The reporters also uncovered declassified archival U.S. military documents ordering the shooting of civilians, out of fear of enemy infiltrators. The story was not published until September 1999, after a year-long struggle with an AP leadership reluctant to run such an explosive report. The AP team subsequently won 11 major journalism awards, including the Pulitzer and a

Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the award ...

Iraq reporting

In the years after the

9/11 terror attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, Hanley reported extensively on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before the 2003 U.S. invasion, he reported from Iraq on the lack of evidence of

weapons of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a Biological agent, biological, chemical weapon, chemical, Radiological weapon, radiological, nuclear weapon, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill or significantly harm many people or cause great dam ...

in that country, discrediting official U.S. claims. He was the first journalist to report on the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. prisons in Iraq, months before photos emerging from Abu Ghraib drew international attention to the story.

Awards

In addition to the honors for the No Gun Ri reporting, Hanley’s other journalism won awards from the

Overseas Press Club The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain ...

, the Associated Press Managing Editors association,

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

’s Feinstein media awards program, the

Korn Ferry Korn Ferry is a management consulting firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1969 and as of 2019, operates in 111 offices in 53 countries and employs 8,198 people worldwide. Korn Ferry operates through four business seg ...

awards for reporting on the United Nations, and the

Society of Environmental Journalists The Society of Environmental Journalists is a non-profit national journalism organization created by and for journalists who report environmental topics in the news media. On its website, the organization says that "SEJ’s mission is to strengt ...

Books

In 2001,

Henry Holt and Company Henry Holt and Company is an American book-publishing company based in New York City. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt (publisher), Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. The company publishes in ...

published '' The Bridge at No Gun Ri'', a narrative recounting of the 1950 massacre and events before and after, written by Hanley with the reporting assistance of his AP partners. In August 2020,

PublicAffairs PublicAffairs (or PublicAffairs Books) is a book publishing company located in New York City and has been a part of the Hachette Book Group since 2016. PublicAffairs was launched in 1997 by Peter Osnos. The current Publisher is Clive Priddl ...

, an imprint of

Perseus Books Group Perseus Books Group was an American publishing company founded in year 1996 by investor Frank Pearl. Perseus acquired the trade publishing division of Addison-Wesley (including the Merloyd Lawrence imprint) in 1997. In 2005, Perseus acquired ...

, published Hanley's ''Ghost Flames: Life and Death in a Hidden War, Korea 1950–1953'', a narrative history of the entire Korean War, told through the experiences of 20 individuals who lived through it, civilians and soldiers of several nationalities involved. An underlying theme is the little-known "dark underside" of wartime atrocities. Earlier in his career, Hanley co-authored ''World War II: A 50th Anniversary History'' (Henry Holt); ''20th Century America'' (Grolier Educational), and ''FLASH! The Associated Press Covers the World'' (Abrams).

References

External links

C-SPAN book discussion, ''The Bridge at No Gun Ri''
Berkeley, CA, September 10, 2001.
"What Really Happened at No Gun Ri?"
a Pritzker Military Library discussion, broadcast on C-SPAN, July 20, 2004.
"Charles Hanley on Korean War 70th Anniversary"
American History TV, C-SPAN, June 21, 2020.
Bill Moyers Journal: Buying the War
April 25, 2007, examination of American journalism in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hanley, Charles J Associated Press reporters Living people 1947 births Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting winners