[Tlc] C-Dith Pran

[justinm at ucr.edu]

FYI.
Thanks,
justin

Subject: The Platform: Dith Pran, One of Journalism's Heroes

http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=NC&pubid=1835
 
                              The Platform: Dith Pran, One of
Journalism's Heroes
                                Peter Osnos, The Century
Foundation, 3/18/2008

                                Dith Pran, who worked with New
York Times
correspondent Sidney Schanberg in Cambodia in the 1970s and
became famous
when their story won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into the
movie The
Killing Fields, is very ill with cancer. He was most recently
in the
Roosevelt Care Center in Edison, New Jersey. We can hope for a
miraculous
recovery. After all, Pran survived years of brutality under
the Khmer Rouge
and walked across the border into Thailand in 1979 where he
was reunited
with Schanberg. In 1980, Pran joined the New York Times as a
photographer
and later founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to
educate young
Americans about the horrors that followed the Indochina wars
in Cambodia.

                                For his valor, talent,
intelligence, and
loyalty, Pran is a remarkable man and is honored as such. But
Pran also
symbolizes something broader for journalism, among our
greatest and least
recognized assets: the local reporters and assistants in zones
of conflict
and turmoil who translate the complexities on the ground for
foreign
correspondents.

                                When I was a regularly in
Cambodia from 1970
to 1972 for the Washington Post and worked with Pran, we
called these
reporters "stringers" or interpreters. More recently, they
have also been
called "fixers" because of their role in managing the range of
hassles and
dangers in places such as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, much of
Africa, and
wherever trouble attracts correspondents. I don't much like
the term
 "fixers" because of its vaguely negative connotation. But
since reporters
also tend to refer to themselves as "hacks"-a nod to Evelyn
Waugh's great
satire, Scoop, about war correspondents a century ago in
Africa-the term
essentially reflects the casual irony of mordant
self-deprecation that is a
bond for journalists everywhere.

                                But war reporting is a very
serious
business. In Iraq, according to the Committee to Protect
Journalists, more
than 125 journalists have been killed. Most of these were
locals, and many
were working with foreign correspondents for, among others,
the New York
Times and the Washington Post. Their role in collecting news,
evaluating
events, and managing the logistics of life in the midst of war
has been
indispensable-as it was in Cambodia when Pran was at our side.
What he and
his brethren provide to outsiders is a pipeline to stories
without official
filters. Their skills as fixers are valuable. Their dedication as
journalists is what makes them heroic.

                                Pran was born in Siem Reap in
1942. He
studied English, among other things, and was working in a
hotel near the
great ruins of Angkor Wat when the Vietnam War spilled over to
Cambodia in
1970. The tourist trade disappeared and Pran made his way to
the capital,
Phnom Penh, where he teamed up with a driver named Mouv and
began offering
services to visiting correspondents at the Hotel Royale, the
ramshackle
colonial-era hotel where most of us lived. By the time I
arrived in Cambodia
in late 1970, my colleague, Peter A. Jay, had arranged for
Pran and Mouv to
be on hand whenever we were in the country, beginning at Phnom
Penh's
Pochentong International Airport, where they expertly
navigated the often
capriciously managed arrival formalities.

                                In that period of the war,
coverage
consisted largely of driving in Mouv's weathered white
Mercedes (another
refugee from the tourist trade) to battlefronts down the
various highways
splayed around Phnom Penh. Pran saw us through the countless
roadblocks and
other military obstacles and carried out the interviews that
were the basis
for our stories. In the early days of the war, dozens of
reporters,
including a number of foreigners were killed, because they
underestimated
how dangerous the countryside was as they careened around in
their cars.
Knowing where to go-and when to turn back-was an essential
piece of the
reporter's job, and without Pran and Mouv to handle those
judgments, we were
largely immobilized.

                                William Shawcross wrote a
classic account of
the Cambodia conflict called Sideshow, which defined the way
the United
States approached the war there, in contrast to the one in
Vietnam, where
the vast American military apparatus was based. As the U.S.
military
gradually withdrew from Indochina and interest in the war
faded, Schanberg
moved to Phnom Penh because he recognized that what was
happening there was
an unfolding catastrophe, whether or not Americans cared. He
hired Pran full
time, and together they brilliantly covered the deterioration
of Lon Nol's
corrupt government and the gathering power of the Khmer Rouge,
culminating
in 1975 in the communist victory, and the mayhem that followed.

                                Pran's choice to stay in Phnom
Penh and at
Schanberg's side when the Khmer Rouge took over is now a piece
of history.
Schanberg was soon expelled and Pran was sent to labor camps
where he
somehow endured the tortures that took the lives of as many as
two million
Cambodians, including many in his family, and his partner,
Mouv. Pran's was
an act of great personal courage and friendship. But Pran's
life and work
were also a symbol of reporting at its best. Once settled in
this country,
Pran became a photographer of considerable skill for the New
York Times, and
his advocacy on behalf of Cambodia in many ways was important
also.

                                In the Indochina war years and
since, Dith
Pran, and the legion of stringers, assistants, interpreters,
and fixers
everywhere he represents, have served journalism's highest
calling. They
make getting the stories possible, and for that our gratitude
should be
boundless.

                                Peter Osnos is Senior Fellow
for Media at
The Century Foundation. Sign-up to receive Osnos' columns
weekly by email
here. Read past columns here.
 
                        Copyright 2008 The Century Foundation.
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MEMORY & JUSTICE
 
Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam)
P.O. Box 1110
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, CAMBODIA
Tel: +855 23 211 875
Fax:+855 23 210 358
Email: dccam at online.com.kh
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Visit: www.cambodiatribunal.org


______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu