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Sydney Schanberg

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Commentator

The Resume

    (January 17, 1934-July 9, 2016)
    Born in Clinton, Massachusetts
    Correspondent for the New York Times (1959-85), New York Newsday (1985-95) and Village Voice (1995-2006)
    Won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his coverage of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia (1976)
    Wrote ‘The Death and Life of Dith Pran (1980)
    Portrayed by Sam Waterston in the film ‘The Killing Fields’ (1984)
    Profile pic shows (l to r) Waterston, Pran and Schanberg

Why he might be annoying:

    Just before the Khmer Rouge took power and launched a genocide that killed off a quarter of the population, he wrote about the Cambodian people, ‘It is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.’
    He clashed repeatedly with New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal, who called him the paper’s ‘resident Communist.’
    He accused John McCain of being part of a conspiracy to suppress evidence that American POWs were still alive and being held in captivity in Vietnam.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He started at the New York Times as a copy boy and worked his way up.
    He was quickly disabused of any illusions about the Khmer Rouge and filed stories about their mass evacuation of Phnom Penh.
    He said, ‘I learned to never make predictions…. Just tell what you know.’
    He was willing to take on his employer, eventually getting fired from the New York Times after writing a series of op-ed columns questioning the paper’s judgment in failing to cover scandals involving the construction of the Westway highway.
    The New York Times described him as ‘a nearly ideal foreign correspondent: a risk-taking adventurer who distrusted officials, relied on himself in a war zone and wrote vividly with the passion of a witness to history.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2021, Out of 6 Votes: 83.33% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 115 Votes: 71.30% Annoying