Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia – the British television documentary that I produced in 1979 – showed how violent US administrations had helped to bring Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to power. This story holds echoes of the Islamic State in the Middle East today.
Between 1969 and 1973, secretly and illegally, President Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger dropped the equivalent in bombs of five Hiroshimas on Cambodia, a country where most people lived beneath straw. In transmitting Nixon’s order for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves.”
According to Pol Pot, his movement – beginning as a small sect – had consisted of “fewer than 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty and leaders.” Once Nixon’s and Kissinger’s B52 bombers had gone to work, the West’s ultimate demon could not believe his luck. For what the White House began, Pol Pot completed; the tens of thousands they bombed to death were described in a Commission of Inquiry as “the first stage in a decade of genocide.”
When I arrived in Phnom Penh in 1979, the city was devastated and mostly deserted. The only civilians seemed to be orphaned children brought in from the forest by the liberating Vietnamese. All were starving. There was precious little food, no power, and no clean water. Millions of dollars worth of redundant bank notes washed through the streets in the afternoon monsoon as the National Bank of Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge had blown up, spilled its worthless treasure into the poorest place on earth.
Cambodia Year Zero, as the documentary has become known, was credited with alerting the world to the suffering of the people of Cambodia under the fanatical regime of Pol Pot. It raised tens of millions of dollars for Cambodia’s children – mostly unsolicited – and became the most watched documentary throughout the world. The story behind the documentary is described in depth in Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and Its Triumphs.
On the 60th anniversary of the founding of ITV, Britain’s and Europe’s biggest commercial broadcaster, this film has been named as one of the network’s 60 top programs.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.