Sydney Schanberg

Sydney Schanberg: A white, American journalist that has covered a wide range of fields and written multiple books. While in the 1970’s working for the New York Times, Sydney was assigned to cover Southeast Asia. Reporters at the time were stationed in Saigon but Sydney elected to do things his way and to go to the source of the story, for him this meant going to Vietnam and Cambodia.While in Cambodia and seeing the retaliation from the Khmer Rouge Mr. Schanberg shifted his focus directly to the dealings going on within the country. After efforts of trying to stay within the country it seemed impossible for an American to stay and survive so as trouble increased he elected to return to the United States. His assistant, Dith Pran, stayed with his native country Cambodia.

Upon returning home Schanberg did not sit on the sidelines but actively engaged in the journalism aspect of getting information out to the public concerning the Cambodian revolution. In 1976 Sydney was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his efforts over in Cambodia. His work with the help of Mr. Pran inspired the creation of the movie The Killing Fields (1984).

Mr. Schanberg continues to be an advocate for effective journalism and for the Cambodian genocide to be brought to light. In a recent interview when asked what he is hoping for after years of working on the story he replied “The truth is enough. Then we can go on from there”

Click here to read about an interview Vietnam Magazine had with Sydney Schanberg himself and his life of journalism as it relates to The Death And Life Of Dith Pran and the film that came from it, The Killing Fields.