Killing Fields reporter

1934-2016

SYDNEY Schanberg, who has died aged 82, was one of the US’s outstanding foreign correspondents; his reporting from Cambodia and his friendship with his translator, Dith Pran, was the basis of the 1984 Oscar-winning film The Killing Fields.

He was born on January 17 1934 and grew up in Clinton, Massachusetts, where his father ran a grocery shop. In 1959, he became a copy boy at The New York Times and within 10 years was promoted to the foreign desk. A “shoe-leather” reporter, Schanberg built his reputation covering the India-Pakistan war of 1971, before being assigned to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. As part of the Vietnam War, the US bombed Cambodia, opening the way for the rise of the brutal Khmer Rouge. The peasant army reached Phnom Penh in April 1975 and Schanberg was forced to leave — but without Pran.

His first report after reaching safety described the scene he left behind: “Two million people suddenly moved out of the city in stunned silence — walking, bicycling, pushing cars that had run out of fuel, covering the roads like a human carpet.”

Pran ended up among them and survived the resulting genocide.

Back in New York, Schanberg was tortured by guilt at leaving his friend behind. His wife, Jane Freiman, said he did not return to being himself until reunited with Pran three years later.

Schanberg became metropolitan editor at the New York Times and championed ordinary people against the city’s property developers — which brought him into conflict with his newspaper’s publisher.

He later became a mentor to reporters, a gruff, cigar-smoking paterfamilias who taught them the virtues of impoliteness.

Schanberg is survived by his wife and two daughters. — © The