Country Media Profile: Cambodia

Most of the media organisations and journalists are unable to work professionally and independently, but function as political tools. They serve the political parties, and very often report differently on the same event, especially on political issues, confusing the readers and listeners. They undermine the professional development of Cambodia's press with their amateurish and often biased treatment of news stories. The powerful and rich politicians use all means at their disposal to attract poor local journalists and media organisations to serve their political agendas in order to reach or retain power.

Media organisations and journalists have become hostages of the powerful politicians, at least partly because the country's judicial system is still weak and the court officials are widely considered to be corrupt, as are political party activists. This often gives news stories, especially the political ones, that are not balanced, and take quotes only from their side and that support their views.

Press Freedom

In the new millennium freedom of expression for the media has improved slightly, but mainly for the printed press. Electronic media are still largely dominated by the ruling Cambodian People's Party of Prime Minster Hun Sen.

Because many citizens have no access to newspapers and magazines, the government doesn't much care about the printed media. However, most of the electronic media are not neutral: all the TV stations and most of the radio stations appear to be dominated by the government. Cambodian media do good business with one hand while serving the ruling party with the other.

Even though the country's constitution provides for freedom of expression and the Press Law grants journalists a number of rights-including a prohibition of censorship and protection from imprisonment for expressing their opinion - it implicitly restricts free speech by requiring that the media reports must not affect public security adversely.

Professionalism

Although many Cambodian journalists have attended short courses and workshops on journalism, both in-country and abroad, most of them still have little professional education. Furthermore, when journalists finish their studies and courses they find themselves unable to put their training into practice. The reason is that the ideas, psychology, and ideology of the current media owners favour their political parties.

Media Ethics

The country has no general code of ethics for its journalists and media organisations – rather each of the journalists associations has their own. Cambodian journalists have been trying to come up with a common code for all the media organisations and journalists, but so far they have not succeeded due to their different political perspectives.

Number of Media Organisations

It may come as a surprise that small Cambodia - where more than 60 percent of the population of some 13 million is illiterate - has registered more than 200 local and foreign media organisations at the Ministry of Information (MOI) since the early 1990s. However, now there are only around 30 organisations in operation. There are 7 TV stations, 18 radio stations. There are more than 100 newspapers and magazines on the MOI list but only about 20 of them are regularly printed.

The Women's Media Centre project, "Improving the Portrayal of Women in the Media" that is supported by WACC, has run since 1996 and made lots of progress. The problems that we have faced so far are related to the situation of the media in my country that I have described. Few pornographic magazines are published because of the market being small, and fierce competition in the country makes most editors focus on how to make money and produce what will sell rather than what is morally respectable. The MOI does not pay much attention to this issue even though the press law, chapter 2, article 7, says that publication of obscene texts or pictures or graphically violent material is prohibited. Somehow, recently, the Prime Minister ordered the MOI to invalidate the licenses of pornographic magazines and file court complaints against pornographic publications. He also ordered to the confiscation of pornographic material.

Link:
http://www.wmc-cambodia.org/