Former New York Times correspondent and columnist and Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg addressed students in Taylor Hall. One of the few journalists to remain in Cambodia after the Americans left and as the Khmer Rouge took over the country, Schanberg recorded the ensuing chaos and the uprooting of millions of Cambodians as Pol Pot’s regime consolidated it’s grim victory. His Cambodian reports won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1976. Schanberg spoke of the critical work that journalists do in avoiding the “natural inclination to self-interest,” which could so easily sway their reporting. Schanberg reminded the audience of the crucial role that reporters play in being “pests” to those in power, “Evil things flourish when good men say nothing,” he said.    The Miscellany News

Schanberg’s book, The Death and Life of Dith Pran (1980), the story of the nearly five years his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran lived through during the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge, formed the basis of the film The Killing Fields (1984).