What’s happening at the Khmer Times?
Writing in Asia Times last year about the state of Cambodia’s media (“A bad day all around for Cambodian media,” published July 2019), I opined: “If the relationship of a journalist to politicians is supposed to be that of a dog to lampposts, as one saying goes, or either at their throat or at their feet, according to another, then Cambodia’s media today are retentive and supine.”
Fitting this summation perfectly is Khmer Times, an English-language daily that heaps praise on Cambodia’s autocratic ruling party and scorn on the party’s critics, and has a long history in the not-so-subtle art of plagiarism. (It’s still amusing that this newspaper is owned by a parent company called Virtus Media.)
DAVID HUTT
