Tough Lessons

By Kelly McEvers
The cambodia daily

When I accepted the job at The Cambodia Daily, I was told I would be training journalists in an emerging democracy to do their job without the influence of the government, in essence to do their job without fear. That was a difficult proposition to refuse.

To some extent, I suppose it was true. Watching a female reporter interrogate the prime minister on the steps of the Foreign Affairs Ministry might have served as some kind of lesson. But as I think back on my time at the Daily, I can only believe the opposite is true.

Whether it was a Friday-afternoon lecture from Pin Sisovann on whether I was wearing “enough shirt”; or the humble, smiling reporting style of Thet Sambath as we confronted a man believed responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands; or a warning from Saing Soenthrith to stop caring so deeply about bringing former Khmer Rouge leaders before a UN tribunal and to listen to opinions of everyday people, the Cambodian reporters taught me everything I know.

Untac and its resulting Constitution forever sealed Cambodia and the West in an unlikely marriage. I am but one of thousands of barangs to have learned a difficult lesson here: That our way is not always the right way, that we came to help, yes, but we also came to listen and to learn.

It’s difficult to maintain this posture at a foreign-run newspaper, where talented and headstrong expatriates strive to make change. As a reporter, and later as deputy editor, I was guilty on more than one occasion of pushing my own agenda to the detriment of the paper.

It wasn’t until I returned to the US that I realized I’d learned lessons. It might appear puzzling that foreigners filter in and out of The Cambodia Daily, that few make it a lifetime commitment. Yet in a way it makes a perfect sense: At some point we all have to graduate.

And the real work at The Cambodia Daily—that of putting out a newspaper every day, that of writing the first chapter of the country’s history—is left to the ones who remain. It’s left to the men and women who founded The Cambodia Daily and who labor there still, the Khmer names you have seen on the masthead these last 10 years. My teachers. Thanks, guys.