Of Ethics, Hatchet Jobs and Misrepresentation

PHNOM PENH – Open a web search window, type in: www.khmertimes.com. Amazingly, you will be taken instantly to the website of The Cambodia Daily.

This website was bought in December 2014. With this, The Cambodia Daily broke media ethics rules by cybersquatting, deliberately diverting online searches for Khmer Times to its own website.

The Daily’s attacks on Khmer Times started over one year ago – weeks before our first paper and ink edition was launched on May 2, 2014.

On March 10, 2014, the Daily’s lead political reporter, Alex Willemyns ran a story under the headline: “CPP-Friendly Publisher to Launch English Paper.”

The story began: “T Mohan, the Malaysian national who edited The Cambodia Times and The Vision newspapers in the 1990s before being arrested for attempting to extort a casino executive on behalf of an alleged insurgent group, is planning to launch a new English-language newspaper.”

Two months later, on May 13, the Daily welcomed its new competitor in Cambodia’s newspaper market with an article by the same writer with updated headline: “CPP-Friendly Businessman Launches Newspaper.” 

The story began with a similar lead: “T Mohan, a Malaysian publisher and businessman arrested in the 1990s for attempting to extort a casino executive, is back in Cambodia’s newspaper market.”

In neither story, did the reporter bother to illuminate readers with the fact that no charges ever were filed in the casino case.

The Daily story continued: “Khmer Times, the latest English-language news offering from Mr. Mohan, hit newsstands earlier this month, with a government spokesman even resigning his position to report for the newspaper.”

Fact: the government spokesman never resigned. Further down, the story said: “According to sub-decrees issued in the Royal Gazette in February 2011, Mr. Mohan currently chairs a company with a 7,187 hectare economic land concession in Kampot province’s Phnom Bokor National Park.” Public disclosure, courtesy of the Daily.

Fact: First, the ELC is only partly inside the park and was delineated by Sub Decree as an ELC.  Second, the size stated is wrong. It is actually 6,718 hectares.

In July, Mr. Willemyns walked uninvited into  Khmer Times newsroom, demanding to know sources for Khmer Times story based on transcripts of a Cabinet meeting.

Last Friday, after watching its circulation slowly erode for nine months, the Daily returned to attack mode. It ran a front page lead story with this headline: “In Coverage of Land Dispute, A Publisher’s Interests Served.”

Among the laundry list of accusations was that the newspaper’s owner publisher (me) did not disclose his involvement with Virtus Green Plantations Cambodia Pte Ltd. The news story also charged that the village and commune chief did not know that I owned  Khmer Times when I interviewed them for quotes in my own news story.

A few Twitter users had a field day with the Daily story.

Here are excerpts of Friday’s Daily story:

“While local media have mostly ignored Decho Aphivat, Khmer Times, an English-language newspaper that started up last year, has become fixated with the area, publishing more than a dozen articles amounting to over 10,000 words about the conflict here.

The newspaper has labeled the villagers “opportunists” and “squatters” led by “land gangs” and “instigators“ that pose a “growing threat to plantation agriculture in Cambodia.”

It also published an article under the byline “M.H. Tee” stating that the concession holder, Virtus Green Plantations, had upgraded a 200-meter stretch of road in the remote commune to “alleviate the sufferings of villagers.”

What Khmer Times has failed to reveal, however, is that its publisher, T. Mohan, is also the founder and CEO of Virtus Group, the parent company of Virtus Green Plantations.”

Here is my response:

Alex Willemyns already made public that I chair a company with an economic land concession in and adjacent to  Kampot Province’s Phnom Bokor National Park. Such information also was published in the Government Gazette.  It is public information. However, I am not the Chairman.

The opening sentences of Mr. Willemyns’ two 2014 stories borders on slander when he wrote “a Malaysian publisher and businessman arrested in the 1990s for attempting to extort a casino executive.” He neglected to clarify that the nearly two decade old accusations never resulted in charges being filed.

Friday’s follow up stories by Matt Blomberg and Aun Pheap deride  Khmer Times stories on the Decho Pongrok Village land grab.

But the authors neglected to mention that they did not identify themselves as reporters from The Cambodia Daily. One of their interview subjects, the village chief, Ek Koy, says she was not informed of their true identities. Instead, she says they visited her village last week Monday under the guise of LICADHO, a human rights NGO. Their ‘cover’ apparently was that their NGO  wanted to drill water wells in the village.

Licadho’s Set Vannak, who brought the two Daily journalists to Decho Pongrok Village, initially denied that he even  went there, let alone  with the two Daily journalists. But, under questioning by Khmer Times reporter Ros Chanveasna, Mr. Vannak later conceded that he, indeed, had gone to the village with the two Daily journalists.

On Saturday, Ms. Ek Koy, the village chief told me in a taped conversation:

“I know Khmer Times. I know you, as you  said so yourself on the day you took my photo, midway between Dechno Pongrok Village and the plantation.

“During the visit of by one Westerner and two Khmers, they asked questions as to whether T. Mohan was paying me $100 per month and so forth. I absolutely deny that they identified themselves as from Cambodia Daily or from Licadho. And I received them as usual as I do with anyone who visits my house.”

After the “LICADHO” visit, Ms. Ek Koy sent a written report to her Commune Chief, Chim Seeoun, who was hospitalized at that time.

Here are excerpts from the “LICADHO” (Daily) questioning of  the Village Chief:

Question: Are you currently working for V.G.P. Company?

Answer: I work for the citizens. I only engage in the workforce as a local authority.

Question: Is it true that you get $100 a month from Mr. Mo Han?

Answer: That is not true!

Question: Is it true that V.G.P. Company illegal seizes land from the villagers?

Answer: That is not true. V.G.P. clearly sets the boundaries for the land in order to avoid conflicts with the villagers in the future, because all the villagers already possess their own piece of land.

Question: Did you call the villagers who are currently living here “chaotic people”?

Answer: As an authority, ever since the day Decho Pongrok Village has been created, we have never paid attention to the villagers’ chaos or systematic methods. We only pay attention to how they are living under the Constitution. Moreover, there is no division of groups/class because we are all Khmer.

Question: How do you feel when you see the staff drinking and having fun?

Answer: The provincial staff come to fulfill their obligations for the villagers of Decho Pongrok Village; they are not here to drink or have fun. We are unable to afford food or drinks for them. They come here with their own meals. However, as the local authority, it’s normal for us to provide them with a place to stay and to rest.

Question: There are sources saying that Mr. Mo Han went to drink at you house. How do you feel about that?

Answer:  Mr. Mo Han has never come to my house to drink or dine. Not even once.

Question: If you’re working for Mr. Mo Han, then why don’t you ask him for monthly salary?

Answer: I am not a V.G.P. Company employee. I am an authority, being paid by the government to serve the citizens.

Chim Seoun, the Commune Chief, spoke to Khmer Times journalist Chanveasna from his hospital bed on Thursday by telephone. Previoulsy, he had talked to another Khmer Times journalist, Ven Rathavong on several occasions. Each time he was informed by the journalists that they were calling from Khmer Times. I, too, told him directly that I own Khmer Times.

When talking about publisher’s ethics and use of a pseudonym, such as M.H. Tee, what is so strange about it?  Those are indeed my initials and it is an accepted norm in the newspaper realm.

To respond point by point to the Daily’s attacks is a waste of newspaper space. Suffice to say, this is a case of “the pot calling the kettle black.”

Facts have been misrepresented. The thrust of the story is a personal attack rather than news. The goal is to try stifle the rise of a new kid on the block,  the “Khmer Times,” which is attracting readers from the Daily.

As the owner, publisher of Khmer Times, I pose these questions:

Why the fetish with the Khmer Times?

Why the infatuation  with the exposes on Decho Pongrok Village by the Khmer Times to the extent that the number of words and  articles were counted?

Are there any reports of clashes between Virtus Green Plantations and villagers?

Why the personal attacks on me which are defamatory in nature, when the application for a publishing permit requires a certificate of no criminal record?

Buried in Friday’s Daily story is the Daily’s acknowledgement that Ms.Koy and the original settlers at Decho Pongrok Village  complain that they are being overwhelmed by new intruders.

These new intruders are working in the village with phony land claims. When a plantation invests up to $2.5 million a year to develop its concession, meets the requirements as stipulated in the concession agreement, builds and rehabilitates up to 12 kilometer of roads and bridges (and  allow villagers to use them), provides jobs to up to 250 Cambodians, creates a local economy, it has the right to make known its grievances.

The  Khmer Times has the right to publicize land grabs -- just as the other papers which  champion the plight of alleged victims of land grabs.

Silence and acquiescence by ELC owners combined with the greed of land claims fuel land grabs. If you have full information on a land grab, what is the harm in publishing it?

But, maybe if you practice cybersquatting, you also then approve of land squatting.

Is The Daily’s “hatchet” job  -- three whacks in one year –  really about the publisher occasionally using  a pseudonym? Or, is the rel threat to the Daily  last week’s announcement that Khmer Times will go five times a week  on July 1?

There are many high profile media executives who do not proclaim their investments to the four corners of the earth.

Khmer Times did not start this fire. We kept silent for more than one year even though the very personal attacks started well before we went to print.  But we are not going to waste journalistic resources preparing “exposes” on rival newspaper publishers. We are not going to devote time and manpower to investigate the Daily’s odd, tax-free “NGO” status in Cambodia.