MEDIA SCRUM: American journalist condemned

Written by Vong Sokheng

Monday, 25 August 2008 Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post

A government spokesman has expressed his disappointment with an American journalist who wrote an article linking the family of Prime Minister Hun Sen with corruption and the mafia. Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith told reporters Sunday that the article, "The World Leader in Corruption Is - Cambodia", was anti-government and was condescending to Cambodia. The author, Joel Brinkley, who first came to Cambodia to cover the fall of the Pol Pot regime and whose stories won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1980, said he can appreciate that the government is unhappy with his column but that he stands by his article. "I have been a journalist for 32 years, 23 of them at The New York Times, and I have a fair understanding of my profession's rules and standards."