What Cambodia can show us about the media
About a year ago I traveled to Cambodia to write a story about the state of journalism there. Admittedly not the most exciting topic to your average student at Utah State, but it was to me a fascinating topic.
What I expected out of the Cambodian media — which is ranked 139 out of 180 in the 2015 World Press Freedom Index — was a government-controlled and intimidated media. That was what I found with media that was primarily Khmer and with the broadcast media, which was state-run anyway. But there was a niche of news that opposes that 139 ranking. The English language press.
This may sound odd, but the English language press in Cambodia — where Khmer is the primary language — is operating freely and aggressively. They write whatever they feel is necessary to write regardless of governmental reprimands they receive. This is not lost on the people there. While talking to a Cambodian teenager in Phnom Penh this was clear. He offhandedly said that he only reads the English press because the Khmer press is so slanted. A luxury he can afford because he speaks English.
In this paper you can read the story I wrote about the English language press, but I would like to use this healthy competition going on in Cambodia to make a point.
I repeatedly hear that newspapers in the U.S. are going away and that journalism in general is dying. I’m not going to sit here and argue about the relevance of newspapers or journalism in today’s society because honestly I don’t think it’ll change any of your opinions. However, I would like to caution against this type of apathetic attitude to this opinion.
I’m not naive. I know that newspapers are less prominent today than they were 10 years ago and 10 years before that. However, the fact that people say that people are so willing to believe and accept an overall decline in journalism is dangerous.
You don’t need to read it every day, you don’t need to watch it every day, but news is an important piece of society. It is also a luxury that we take for granted in this country. After all, you could be living in a country where the only way to check the government and those in positions of power is through a medium written in a secondary language.
You may not consume news, but it helps check things. You may not have faith in our media, but its presence is vital. You may not care about this column, but it’s the only way I know how to encourage people to care about the state of the media.
Apathy is a dangerous stance to have. Too much of it directed at one thing can lead to its extinction. So I encourage you, love the media, hate the media, but at the very least have degree of care for the media. Because a malnourished news medium is a dangerous thing for a country to have.
—Jeffrey is a senior majoring in broadcast journalism. Yes, is a little biased towards caring about the media, which is fitting for the opinion section. You can reach him at dahdahjm@gmail.com or on twitter @dahdahjeff.