By WILLIAM C. ADAMS AND MICHAEL JOBLOVE

From Television Coverage of International Affairs,
William C. Adams, editor (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1982).
[Annotations added by the author September 2002.]

In April of 1975, Khmer Rouge forces overran Phnom Penh. Until their fall from power in the winter of 1979, the world was witness to one of the most bizarre and brutal revolutions of this century. Costs of Khmer Rouge rule were high. An estimated one to three million of Cambodia's eight million people died by starvation, disease, or execution.

No other single episode has involved a greater loss of life during the last quarter century. Yet, despite the barbarism and magnitude of the tragedy, little public attention was directed to Cambodia. It was ignored by the US media, government, and people.

The death toll was at least a thousand times greater than that of the Jonestown murders and suicides [the 1978 suicides and murder of over 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones in Guyana], but news coverage of Cambodia was a fraction of that given to Jonestown. Added together over the entire four year Khmer Rouge period, all three television networks devoted less than 60 minutes on weeknights to the new society and human rights in Cambodia. Nearly three hours were spent detailing the Jonestown deaths in the first week alone.

What, if anything, were Americans told about human rights and society in Cambodia from their preferred source of international news -- early evening, network television news? To find out, we examined Vanderbilt University's Television News Index and Abstracts for weeknight news coverage from April 1975 until December 1978. (1)

The Vanderbilt Archive loaned compiled videotapes of the stories we had identified from the abstracts. Stories selected were all those about Cambodian refugees, genocide, general Khmer Rouge policies, and the reconstruction of society. Excluded were purely military stories about border clashes, civil war, and the Mayaguez. Research was conducted at the television news studies facilities of George Washington University's Gelman Library. The findings were generally consistent for all three networks.

A Few Sad Questions

Stories about the "new society" and death in Cambodia were so sporadic that even the most constant viewers could not be expected to grasp the gravity of the Cambodian crisis. As shown in Table 12.1, from April 1975 to December 1978, NBC aired 11 stories (17 minutes 35 seconds) on life in the "new Cambodia," compared with 13 stories on CBS (28 minutes 55 seconds), and 6 stories on ABC (11 minutes 25 seconds). This averages out to less than 30 seconds per month per network on the rule of the Khmer Rouge.

ABC offered a little over 4 minutes in 1975, and the next year carried one human rights story about Cambodia. Two years passed before ABC returned to the subject. In April 1978, ABC viewers heard anchorman Tom Jarriel say President Carter had condemned Cambodia as "the worst offender in the world" with regard to human rights. Carter had apparently not been watching ABC news.

CBS focused on human rights in Cambodia for 60 seconds during 1975, for 6 minutes 10 seconds in 1976, and for the same amount of time again in 1977. CBS stepped up coverage in 1978. In April 1978, CBS ran two special reports -- each over 4 minutes. Later in August, after Senator McGovern's call for armed intervention in Cambodia, CBS spent 2 minutes 20 seconds on the subject of Cambodian human rights.

NBC's nearly 18 minutes of coverage over four years almost equaled a single night's coverage of the Guyana massacre. NBC did broadcast a Segment Three (4 minutes 30 seconds) feature on human rights in Cambodia during the evening news on June 2, 1978. Once, NBC even opened its program with a lead story on Cambodian suffering (7/20/75). The 20-second story concerned an attempted escape of 300 Cambodians; only 12 people had survived. This story and its placement were quite exceptional. No other Cambodian human rights story was ever made the lead; the few stories that were aired were usually placed midway through the broadcast. Overall, in 1975-78, very little time was devoted to the steady stream of refugees who succeeded (or failed) in escaping what they called the "terror" of their homeland.

This accounting of air time on human rights in Cambodia does not measure the number of times when, in a story that was otherwise about a border clash with Vietnam, the regime might have been referred to as "harsh." However, the figures are actually generous because they include air time devoted to any discussion of the "new society" created by the Khmer Rouge, some of which dismissed or ignored reports of genocide. When this "harshness" was specifically mentioned, treatment of the subject of mass murders varied wildly -- sometimes treated with skepticism, sometimes as undisputed fact, sometimes as mere rumor. The issue of genocide was explicitly addressed less than 1 minute by ABC, less than 4 minutes by CBS, and less than 4 minutes by NBC.

On August 21, 1978, Senator McGovern called for an international force to invade Cambodia in order to stop the genocide. The incongruity of George McGovern advocating military action in Southeast Asia was enough to attract some attention. ABC interviewed the Senator and included a follow-up clip of a refugee's personal story of tragedy. CBS covered the subcommittee meeting at which the plea was made. NBC gave minimum coverage with a 20-second summary.

Network Silence Despite Numerous Reports

Why was the massive loss of life in Cambodia given so little attention? It was not that the networks were uninformed about the new regime; as soon as news of the deaths reached the outside world, the networks were alerted. As early as June 24, 1975, in a speech covered by all three networks, Secretary of State Kissinger stressed that Cambodians had "...suffered a terrible death toll" under the Khmer Rouge. CBS also mentioned that Freedom House had compared the Cambodian events to the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews.

On July 8, 1975, as eyewitness reports of barbarism were brought by escaping refugees, NBC ran a story with correspondent Barry Kalb. According to Kalb, "the story [the refugees] have been telling is one of horror." One witness saw "1,500 bodies, all knifed to death." One refugee said people were killed "if they didn't plant rice" and said he had recently seen 1,000 dead bodies. Kalb notes that skepticism first greeted such stories, "but now there are so many that it must be true."

Somehow, this remarkable NBC story did not generate others. The fact that thousands of people were filling up refugee camps across Thailand with accounts of mass murders and starvation in Cambodia was not deemed newsworthy.

ABC's single enterprising story in 1975 was an interview with the then head of state, Prince Sihanouk. This was the only network interview with a Cambodian government official since Kissinger's speech on the massive loss of life, since the Kalb story of atrocities, and since newspaper accounts of forced labor camps and executions. Harry Reasoner was not shown questioning Sihanouk about any of these matters. Instead, the Prince was shown talking about rice production and boosting the economy.

This prompted Mr. Reasoner's "roughest" inquiry:

Prince Sihanouk, you spoke of the necessary severe and austere government. Now I think of nothing more unlike the Cambodian people than severity and austerity. Have they changed?

No, no, no, no. You know the Khmer Rouge, they are very nationalistic. Also, they want Cambodia to remain Cambodian. When I say severe or austere I mean that we have to walk much more than before. But Cambodians, they remain Cambodians. They like joking. They like laughing, they like singing. So they continue to do it. There is really a general way of life and there is still this way of life in Cambodia.

On January 26, 1976, CBS aired an account from reporter Peter Collins about forced evacuation from the cities, forced labor in the fields, and a refugee tale of five workers beaten to death with an iron pipe. Collins concluded that no one had been allowed to verify the refugee horror tales, "but their accounts of life across this frontier are so numerous and detailed, there seems little doubt that the new Communist regime is continuing its harsh reform of Cambodia, under what refugees describe as 'a reign of terror.'" But CBS did not pursue the story. Six months passed before CBS again considered this "reign of terror."

A Small Shift in 1978

In 1978, after two years of near total neglect, the networks ran a handful of stories about human rights in Cambodia. On January 18, 1978, CBS covered Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher's condemnation of the "systematic terror and grinding down of the Cambodian people." "Hundreds of thousands of human beings," he said, "have perished under this regime." (Neither NBC nor ABC made any mention of the speech, although five months had passed since NBC had told its viewers about human rights "problems" in Cambodia and nearly two years had elapsed since ABC's last report on the subject.)

A two-part "Inside Cambodia" series by CBS's Bert Quint was aired April 20 and 21, 1978. Quint made references to estimates of one million people having been killed, though he cautioned that the figure "had not been confirmed by neutral observers." "Neither," he added, had "the new rulers bothered to deny them." Refugee accounts of harsh working conditions and mass killings were also mentioned.

Also on April 20, 1978, NBC ran a retrospective on Khmer Rouge rule. John Chancellor introduced the piece:

It was three years ago this week that the city of Phnom Penh was captured by the Khmer Rouge revolutionary movement, and since then the story of Cambodia has been a horror story: The cities emptied thousands killed or allowed to die in the countryside. There have been charges of genocide.

By late 1978, the occasional network stories had even begun to stop "balancing" the reports of mass execution with reports of "cleaning up the cities." Death estimates that had earlier been simple "reports of mass death" (NBC, 7/8/75) became in 1978 "stories of one million killed" (CBS, 4/20/78), "hundreds of thousands, possibly 21/2 million killed" (CBS, 8/21/78), "one hundred thousand to one million" (NBC, 6/2/78), "one to three million" (NBC, 9/21/78).

Why Did The Networks Dismiss Cambodia?

Nightly news cannot cover everything. The criticism that broadcast news people themselves make most frequently is that the program is too brief. In this light, they note, the omissions and compression imposed by brevity are unfortunate but also unavoidable.  Nevertheless, it is difficult to understand why the tragedy of Cambodia never secured any sustained attention.

One explanation is ideological. Events in Cambodia appeared to contradict the supposed Lessons of Vietnam. The wisdom Americans were to have acquired in Southeast Asia was that leftist guerrilla insurgents were nationalistic and relatively benign, were likely improvements over the corrupt rightist regimes they replaced, and were certainly not worth any significant expenditure of US diplomatic, economic, or military power. As one telling New York Times headline put it: "Indochina Without Americans/For Most, a Better Life" (April 13, 1975). Unfortunately, Pol Pot's epigones of Marx-Lenin-Mao had not read this particular script. Thousands of Cambodian refugees brought stories of mass death and murder, but this "unverified" news could not be easily broadcast or printed to fit the Lessons of Vietnam.

There are other possible reasons for the lack of coverage. However, some of the usual explanations are inadequate.

When television news downplays a story that would otherwise appear to merit more coverage, the reason is often that the story lacked "good pictures," lacked drama and controversy, or lacked human interest. Television news, students of the medium repeatedly note, places a premium on stories that can be made visually interesting and that create emotional involvement by showing continuing sagas of conflict, danger, irony, humor, tragedy.

Cambodia under Khmer Rouge rule should have qualified superbly for the dramaturgy of television news. Only one barrier hampered coverage: camera crews were not invited inside the borders to beam home pictures of death, executions, and the forced march into the countryside. Poignant and striking footage was available without end, however, in refugee camps all across eastern Thailand. The horrible tales of death told movingly by escaped Cambodians made Kalb's July 1975 story strong and vivid. With continuous daring escape attempts, the uprooted and terrorized families, and the vandalizing of an historic culture, human interest stories were scarcely in short supply. The fact that television ignored the upheaval in Cambodia simply cannot be attributed to a dull story with poor pictures.

An even less convincing argument for the lack of coverage is that the outside world did not really know precisely what was going on within the jungle borders. Pol Pot did not issue a press release confirming the number of deaths as three million or merely three hundred thousand. Nor was it announced how many of the deaths should be attributed to starvation, the forced march, disease, bullets, or being clubbed to death. Not knowing exactly, the line goes, the media prudently overlooked the subject entirely.

When presented with the network record on Cambodia, one producer at ABC News responded, incredibly enough, by repeating the "no pictures" and "no certitude" arguments. Mary Fifield (1980) wrote that the "elemental explanation" for ABC's "difficulty" in covering the "devastation in Cambodia" was that "we could not get into the country." She said candidly:

Since we were not able to gain entrance to Cambodia, there was no way television news could show the actual tragedy. Although there were refugees in camps along the Thai border who were willing to describe the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, some reporters and editors were reluctant to use their stories because they were not always completely reliable.

Producer Fifield noted correctly that in 1979, after the Khmer Rouge was overthrown, the networks' coverage "improved." In 1979, with Pol Pot's terror ended, ABC's retrospectives – presumably replete with superb pictures and the very fullest verification – must certainly have been impressive.

The head-in-the-sand argument is a bizarre one. Even the possibility of mass murder of thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands (at a time when Americans were watching "Holocaust" [a highly rated mini-series about about Nazi persecution and mass murders of Jews] in prime time), should surely have triggered a sustained effort at intense and tough investigative reporting. That the dimensions of the chaos in Cambodia were not altogether clear should have prompted greater scrutiny, not less. From Three Mile Island to Jonestown to Skylab to DC-10s, uncertainty as to the possible scope of a misfortune is usually an incentive, not a deterrent, to additional coverage.

In the case of Cambodia, from the earliest days of the Khmer Rouge, there were repeated and consistent reports from refugees in camps hundreds of miles apart telling similar stories of death and murder (e.g., see Barron & Paul, 1977). Only a handful of these stories found their way onto network television.

Silence From The White House, The Post, And The Times

In addition to ideology, another plausible explanation for the low level of television news about Cambodia was the strange silence from the White House. Scholars observed a decade ago that television, even more than the print media, is obsessed with the Presidency. The absence of presidential concern about Cambodia would thus be likely to decrease the prospects for network coverage still further.

Neither Carter nor Ford directed any sustained attention to events under the Khmer Rouge. Both administrations engaged in the ritual of an annual condemnation of the regime, but little more -- no major diplomatic offensives, no continual publicity efforts, no stream of speeches, and no public debate over more overt moves. With little but token gestures from the President, at least one major factor that would promote network coverage of the subject was absent. (This is also partly circular, because greater media attention would likely have stimulated more concern with the subject at the White House.)

One other explanation for the lack of concern with Cambodia is that television caricatures the front page of the prestige press. Assignment editors rely heavily on the New York Times, Washington Post, and wire services to set the network agenda. Television news usually seems afraid to veer far from the pack and is unlikely to provide extensive coverage of a topic given little attention in print. While this explanation begs the question of Post and Times coverage, it does help account for television's pattern. In fact, until mid-1978, the Times and the Post gave very little space to events in Cambodia. In the summer of 1978, both papers began to run two or three front-page stories a month relating to human rights in Cambodia. While this falls short of the attention focused on certain authoritarian regimes in the West, it exceeded the coverage given throughout 1975, 1976, and 1977 to Cambodia. In those years, only two or three news stories regarding human rights in Cambodia were run during each 12-month period. Thus, television coverage as a proportion of available time and space compares favorably to print coverage.

The problem of inattention and silence was explained in the New York Times editorial on July 9, 1975:

The picture begins to emerge of a country that resembles a giant prison camp with the urban supporters of the former regime being worked to death on thin gruel and hard labor and with medical care virtually nonexistent.

The mouthing of such high-sounding objectives as "peasant revolutions" or "purification" through labor on the land cannot conceal the barbarous cruelty of the Khmer Rouge, which can be compared with Soviet extermination of Kulaks or with Gulag Archipelago.

What, if anything, can the outside world do to alter the genocidal policies of Cambodia's hard men? Silence certainly will not move them. Were Cambodia a non-Communist or non-Third World country, the outraged protests from the developing and Communist countries, not to mention Europe and the United States, would be deafening.

Members of Congress and others who rightly criticized the undemocratic nature of the Lon Nol regime have a special obligation to speak up. Few if any have been heard from. The United Nations is silent. That silence must be broken.

References

1. Anderson, Jack and Bill Pronzini. 1981. The Cambodia File. New York: Doubleday.
2. Barron, John and Anthony Paul. 1977. Murder of a Gentle Land. New York: Reader's Digest Press.
3. Fifield, Mary. 1980. Letters. Policy Review 12 (Spring 1980): 3.
4. Savitch, Jessica. 1980. Letters. Policy Review 12 (Spring 1980): 3-4.

Footnotes

1. In addition to examining the Vanderbilt Television News Index and Abstracts for all weeknight stories, we included in this study those relevant stories that were carried on weekend broadcasts available from the Vanderbilt Archive. The collection at Vanderbilt does not include a few of the weekend programs that were broadcast during this four-year period, but the focus of this research was on weeknight news, when the networks have their largest news audience. It also seems unlikely that a few weekend broadcasts would vary systematically from the consistent pattern found on all weeknight newscasts on all three networks. In any event, their complete inclusion could hardly change the central conclusion of this chapter. (Cf., Savitch, 1980.)

 
2. Jack Anderson was notable for his concern with what he called the "wholesale butchery" in Cambodia. See, for example, his Washington Post columns on May 2 and 3, 1978. See also Anderson and Pronzini, 1981.