Journalism and Life
Getting a Newspaper Off the Ground

By Lor Chandara
Tthe cambodia daily

My 10 years of working as a journalist for The Cambodia Daily have changed my life from that of a poor country boy to a bright “alien” man in the eyes of the Takeo villagers among whom I was raised.

After years of being exposed to the English language and Western values, I no longer speak Khmer with a Takeo accent, nor do I think and learn the same way.

This became apparent last month when I took a weekend trip back to Takeo village, where I spent an evening with friends, singing karaoke at my in-laws’ house. Having overheard the racket, neighbors asked my sister-in-law the next morning whether a barang— Khmer for Frenchman or Westerner—had been singing in Khmer at her place.

Their inquiries made us laugh. I’ve never imagined I would be mistaken for a foreigner.

Not only has the Daily changed who I am, in the last decade, but I’ve noticed that it has changed the attitudes of government officials toward the press too.

When I first started working for the newspaper in 1993, government officials—especially from the CPP—were suspicious of the newspaper’s independence. Many officials did not understand the concept of freedom of expression and freedom of the press and they did not grasp the role of a free press in democracy. Since 1995, five journalists have been killed in “accidents” after reporting stories critical of the government.

Slowly, however, government suspicion toward reporters is fading away.

•••

The 10th anniversary of The Cambodia Daily coincides with my 30th birth year.

As both anniversaries approached, I began reflecting on the much harder times my family—and the families of millions of others— suffered during the Khmer Rouge regime.

In April, my mother, Chhoeng Sok, visited, for the first time in 27 years, a Tuol Kok area where we had once lived happily before we were evicted from Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge in 1975.

When we arrived there on a cool afternoon, my mother could hardly recognize where our house once stood. New concrete buildings had replaced huts we owned before the war.

Sitting inside my parked car, my mother’s voice choked up as she recalled the past and her eyes filled with tears. She pointed to an open space in front of us and said, “That area was where you played with your older brother.”

My brother Lor Ponna, cherished as the smart one among us children, died in Takeo when he was 10. The starvation and disease that killed him were brought on by the dire situation created by the Khmer Rouge regime.

My mother added that in the same place where we once played, she witnessed a woman being beaten, kicked and shot dead by Khmer Rouge soldiers on the first day they came to power, April 17, 1975. The woman was killed because she had refused to leave her house.

“I was very frightened when watching the scene,” my mother said. “I heard the woman scream for help but I could not manage to help her.”

Like thousands of Phnom Penh residents, my relatives were evacuated from the city to our native Takeo province. Then we were separated. Throughout the Pol Pot regime, my mother said, we suffered so badly, she could not even begin to speak of her experiences.

“The misery we experienced is beyond what I can tell you in a few hours. It takes days to tell all,” she said.

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, my family was stranded in Takeo village, where they eventually settled.

In the following years, we saw much of our freedom returned to us, even under the tight control of the Vietnamese occupation.

In school, I was indoctrinated with the ideology of Marxist-Leninist communism and learned about the Indochinese communist revolution. And through high school, I was taught to hate the Khmer Rouge and its supporters.

My path to becoming a journalist is a circuitous one.
In my early years, I had hoped to become an engineer at the advice of my late father, Lor Hel, who died in 1987.

Lor Hel was a guard and cleaner of a building run by Russian engineers. I often followed him at work in my spare time. There, I saw Cambodian students taking engineering classes, busily making designs on paper and wooden blocks. They inspired my dream to become an engineer, to speak a foreign language and study abroad. My career in engineering, however, was thwarted after I realized I could never afford the $2,000 required to buy a “passing grade” on my entry exams. Without the bribe, I was told, I would not be admitted into school.

On my mother’s meager income from selling porridge and noodles, however, I managed to take French and English classes. My hope was to find a job where I could use my knowledge of written English to help my small family.

In August 1993, I learned through my cousin, journalist Vong Sokheng, about the establishment of The Cambodia Daily. The newspaper’s goal, according to its founder and publisher, Bernard Krisher, was “to make Cambodia a more informed society so its leaders may reach sounder decisions in the nation’s development.”

“At the same time, we wish to contribute to training journalists,” Krisher said in his opinion piece published in the first edition of the paper.

Through Vong Sokheng, I met Barton Biggs, the newspaper’s first editor-in-chief, for an interview, but my English speaking and comprehension was terribly poor. Instead, he handed me a Khmer document and asked me to translate it into English.

My translation turned out to be “very good,” Biggs said. He smiled at me and told me I could start off as an intern for the first three months.

•••

On June 6, when the UN finally signed a deal with the government to set up a Khmer Rouge tribunal, my fellow reporter, Porter Barron, and I went to visit the Pailin homes of two former rebel leaders, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea. We wanted to ask them for their reaction to the long-awaited tribunal agreement.

I also personally wanted to bring home answers to my mother’s question: “Why did the intelligent clique of Pol Pot followers implement such a crazy policy starving and killing their own people?”

Unfortunately, Porter and I were unsuccessful in our mission. When we arrived at Nuon Chea’s home, the former Khmer Rouge leader disappeared into his house and pretended he wasn’t home.

Despite my knowledge of his role in the genocide that killed my beloved brother, I was compelled to show my respect to the old man. In Khmer tradition, the young must respect the old, no matter how badly the latter behaves.

I addressed Nuon Chea as I would my uncle, calling to him: “Uncle, we are journalists. We have come to visit you.”
He did not answer the door.

I left with the hope that the Khmer Rouge tribunal will finally give an honest answer to my mother’s only question: “Why did they kill their own people?”

•••

Since my days as an intern at the Daily, I’ve covered a range of issues and events, from politics, corruption, violence and human rights violations to business, health and environment.

As a senior reporter, I now often work with budding Cambodian journalists, offering them advice on how to work in a free and independent press. I also work with the expatriate staff, passing on valuable information and sources.

Although the paper is dominated by the expatriate staff, The Cambodia Daily has also promoted Cambodian reporters to management positions. I was promoted from reporter to associate editor in 1999. Two years later, Krisher offered me a management position, in charge of funneling stories from provincial freelance reporters. I accepted with pleasure.

Through this job, I’ve recruited a dozen freelance reporters from all corners of the country. Their work is forcing local authorities to take accountability for their actions. Through them, the voice of the voiceless is being heard by the policy-makers.

My experiences with the Daily have allowed me to become guest lecturer at conferences both here and abroad and I have attended training seminars and media conferences in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Sweden.

The Daily has also inspired me to start up my own library in Takeo village. Since it was founded in 2001, the Angsoeng Library—previously known as the Takeo Rural Media Library—has become an important source of information for villagers who were deprived of independent news. Many still receive most of their information through state-run radio and television.

Though I never became an engineer as I had once dreamed, I now find journalism the most rewarding and inspiring career.

In the past, Prime Minister Hun Sen has said he doesn’t want his son, who is well-educated in the US, to follow in his footsteps. But I am different from Hun Sen. I want one of my two sons to inherit the journalism skills I have. "

In the years to come, I plan to continue working at The Cambodia Daily, because I think I can help my people and my nation through what our paper represents for the free press.

I also hope to save some money and eventually obtain the university degree that I never had the chance to receive. If I again have the opportunity to go to school, maybe it will make me smarter.