First Person
By Marsha Barber

Beyond the five Ws
Canadian journalists are trying to help their Cambodian counterparts function as effective watchdogs 

This was the big moment. Cambodia’s Minister of Information strode into the classroom with his entourage and made his way to the table where tropical fruits and bottled water lay waiting. Lu Lay Sreng was here to talk to students taking our broadcast journalism course.

Journalist John Keating and I had come to the northwestern province of Battambang to teach. We’d been sent by IMPACS, a Canadian organization committed to protecting democracy and media freedom around the world. Today, these 26 broadcast journalists were meeting the man who virtually controlled Cambodian media.

Station managers clear stories with the director of information. The director of information often lunches with the province’s governor.

Doubtless, Minister Lu Lay Sreng was used to more luxurious surroundings. Here we were on the second floor of a battered French colonial building which housed the local radio station. Swishing fans stirred up layers of dust which blew in from the outside along with the distant sounds of moped horns. The walls of the room were painted yellow once, a very long time ago. Now they were mouldy and crumbling.

As Minister Lu Lay Sreng surveyed the room, the students greeted him. They put their hands together in the traditional prayer-like gesture of respect and told his Excellency their names and where they came from. Four students worked at a radio station in Pailin, a small town near the Thai border, and a Khmer Rouge stronghold. Some came from Siem Riep, the site of the temples of Ankgor, magnificent temples built between the 9th and 14th centuries and among the architectural wonders of the world. Many came from around Battambang City itself, the province’s capital. They rode their bicycles and mopeds down the land-mine destroyed country roads outside town, past rice paddies, banana trees and water buffalo to get to class.  

Their show of respect toward a government official was to be expected. After all the government owns virtually all radio and television stations in Cambodia. The stations are run as strict hierarchies. Reporters clear stories with station managers. Station managers clear stories with the director of information. The director of information often lunches with the province’s governor.

Our students were on the bottom rung and had learned avoid challenging authority – and with good reason. Most earn $15 a month. It takes $75 a month to live. Some students make up the difference by moonlighting as farmers or moped taxi drivers. Many also rely on “pay packets,” money handed out at all government press conferences. The money buys the government good will. Reporters depend on that will to supplement their meagre incomes.

In return for a positive spin, politicians take care of favoured reporters. When politicians travel around the country they take their five or six favourites and cover all expenses: food, transportation, accommodation. Officials’ speeches are frequently broadcast in their entirety.

The constitution does guarantee freedom of speech and Cambodia today has a relatively liberal press law. However, one clause allows the government to suspend offending publications and broadcasts for thirty days.

Even without the threat of suspension, there’s a lot of self-censorship. Journalists still remember a time when their colleagues were shot and jailed. Even today in Battambang many people still own guns, a legacy of the civil war. Some journalists believe the gun owners wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a muckraking reporter.

How do you train knowing all that?  

Some newsrooms lacked phones or tape recorders. Some couldn’t afford gas money for reporters who had to travel by moped to get clips.

John and I had other challenges as well. Many reporters rely on market place gossip and innuendo to fuel their stories. Some take unreliably sourced newspaper articles and read them verbatim on air. That doesn’t help their professional reputations. Nor does the fact that some reporters find blackmailing subjects can be a reliable source of income. As the Cambodian saying goes, “Small people take small bribes, big people take big bribes.” Corruption is a way of life even if most Cambodians say they want to stamp it out.

Government officials told us they hoped training would help journalists become more professional. But this was not the only reason we were teaching the course. Foreign aid dollars are often tied to allowing trainers into the country.

After a couple of false starts, and as we learned more about local conditions, John and I decided to keep the goals simple: at the end of the course students would understand basic journalistic concepts such as inverted pyramids and the five Ws, be able to write copy stories, know how to record and use clips and how to research and write a basic reporter story.

Even these modest goals had been a challenge. Some newsrooms lacked phones or tape recorders. Some couldn’t afford gas money for reporters who had to travel by moped to get clips.  John and I spent a lot of time after class wandering around the Battambang market and discussing this. As we walked past stalls stacked with rambutans and jackfruits, dodging on-coming donkey carts, we compared notes.

We realised our students had no formal journalism training. However, they were enthusiastic and many had a good sense of what a news story is. They were particularly keen to report on the social problems in Cambodia.

On good days, I was exhilarated. The teaching had gone well. I could see real progress. There was nowhere on Earth I’d rather be.

On bad days, I doubted whether anything we taught would make a difference in the long run. When I saw the way the students hung on the minister’s words, it only confirmed my suspicions. 

If this had been a room full of print journalists, things might have been different.

In contrast to broadcast, print enjoys a dizzying freedom. As the minister complained to me, “Any farmer can start a paper.” That’s not quite true; publishing is an expensive business. But the government is right about one thing: yellow journalism is alive and well in Cambodia. Most publications are privately owned and the press is vibrant and opinionated.

In addition, the seeds of investigative journalism have been sewn. One of Cambodia’s leading print journalists works for IMPACS and was in the classroom during the minister’s visit. Ouk Kim Seng does ground-breaking investigative work in his weekly publication Cambodia News Bulletin. The Bulletin started a year ago January. It has already been suspended twice but Kim Seng says he’ll continue to sniff out government corruption. He’s optimistic about the future of journalism in Cambodia and believes things are opening up beyond anyone’s expectations, at least in the print sector.

But now the minister was addressing a room full of broadcasters, many of whom described themselves as civil servants because the government signs their cheques. I wasn’t surprised that the room went quiet when the minister threw open the floor for a brief question period.

John and I knew our students would have this opportunity. We’d certainly discussed the best way to handle it. We’d encouraged the class to prepare questions ahead of time. In consultation, with our interpreters and the director of information who oversaw journalism in Battambang, we were able to reassure them that asking tough questions in this forum was acceptable. Ouk Kim Seng also encouraged them. Our students knew times were changing in Cambodia and the government was encouraging us to teach them how journalism was practised in a democracy.  

I didn’t expect much though, even when Mao Bun Tem raised her hand.

Mao Bun Tem was one of only three women in the class, and, at 49, the eldest.

She was warm and forthright but often daunted by the new concepts she was learning. Mao Bun Tem recognised that it took her longer to grasp course material than most of the others. She dealt with the stress by cracking jokes or giggling. But Mao Bun Tem came into her own that day Minister Lu Lay Sreng came to visit. In fact, she was the very first student in the class to ask a question.

Mao Bun Tem was nervous but composed. “How can you expect to have a responsible press corps when journalists are paid so badly?” she asked. Interpreter Khuy Sockoeun translated into my ear. He was smiling broadly. The minister did not have a satisfactory answer, but maybe that wasn’t the point.

After that the questions came fast: Why did some provinces have no stations and therefore no voice? Why could others afford to stay on the air only three hours a day? Something had changed in that classroom.

Cambodia continues to encourage training. Within a couple of years it’s possible that people such as our interpreters or students such as Mao Bun Tem will be formally training their colleagues. I hope so. And I hope that broadcast journalists come to enjoy the same freedoms many of the privately-owned Cambodian publications enjoy.

Since I’ve returned, I’ve been asked what advice I’d have for the growing number of Canadian journalists doing training overseas. I reply by stating the obvious: Do a lot of listening. Don’t assume this is like doing training in Canada. However, my main piece of advice is this: If asked to do overseas training, don’t hesitate. It will give you a perspective on both journalism and training you can’t get anywhere else.  

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Marsha Barber is on faculty at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto and is a journalism trainer and producer. Marsha plans to return to Cambodia this summer.