Dith Pran, One of Journalism's Heroes

Dith Pran, who worked with New York Times correspondent Sidney Schanberg in Cambodia in the 1970s and became famous when their story won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into the movie The Killing Fields, is very ill with cancer. He was most recently in the Roosevelt Care Center in Edison, New Jersey. We can hope for a miraculous recovery. After all, Pran survived years of brutality under the Khmer Rouge and walked across the border into Thailand in 1979 where he was reunited with Schanberg. In 1980, Pran joined the New York Times as a photographer and later founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to educate young Americans about the horrors that followed the Indochina wars in Cambodia.

For his valor, talent, intelligence, and loyalty, Pran is a remarkable man and is honored as such. But Pran also symbolizes something broader for journalism, among our greatest and least recognized assets: the local reporters and assistants in zones of conflict and turmoil who translate the complexities on the ground for foreign correspondents. [Click for MORE] Sphere: Related Content