Participants at a seminar on the role of Cambodian media and elections were told on Friday about the importance of fair and balanced reporting, but a decision by the event’s organizers to pay journalists who attended the meeting raised questions of its own.
Some 200 members of local and international NGOs, media outlets and government officials turned out for the 9th Workshop on Election and Equal Rights to Information, attended by Minister of Information Lu Laysreng.
The four-hours of presentations touched off issues such as government domination of the electronic media at election time, the difficulties of reporting news from remote locations and the lack of professionalism among some journalists.
However, with only 15 minutes for question time, many participants left with few answers, and surprised looks when substantial bundles of riel were handed out to journalists with a suggestion to write about the workshop.
“There was too much listening and too little discussion,” said Ly Meng Houth of the Cambodian Labor Organization. “The time for questions is too short.”
Ouk Nay Kim, chief of administration of the Star Kampuchea Organization—a local advocacy group who organized Friday’s meeting—said that the question period was curtailed because speakers usually do not like to answer verbal questions. “Some even want to know the questions in advance. It is difficult to open up for free questions,” he said.
Ouk Nay Kim also said he was unaware of the payments as his organization’s public relations department was in charge of hosting the event.
But if money was paid to journalists it wasn’t for good reviews in local papers: “It was for travel [costs],” Ouk Nay Kim said.
Earlier in the day, Funcinpec Parliamentarian Ok Socheat told the workshop that Cambodian journalists lacked freedom.
Cambodian journalists are not killed anymore but they are still controlled, Ok Socheat said.
He also blasted TV and radio coverage of the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, which amounted to less than 1 percent during the weeks before the February commune elections.
Local and international election monitoring groups blasted the unequal access to the broadcast media during the commune elections.
The vast majority of radio and television political coverage was focused on Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling CPP, which won a landslide victory in the local poll, held in early February.
