Sydney Schanberg

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Sydney Schanberg
Born	Sydney Hillel Schanberg (1934-01-17)January 17, 1934 Clinton, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	July 9, 2016(2016-07-09) (aged 82) Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Journalist
Spouse	Janice Leah Sakofsky (1967-1976 divorced)[1] Jane Freiman (1995-2016 his death) [2]
Children	Jessica and Rebecca

Sydney Hillel Schanberg (January 17, 1934 – July 9, 2016) was an American

Schanberg joined The New York Times as a journalist in 1959. He spent much of the early 1970s in Southeast Asia as a correspondent for the Times. For his reporting, he won the George Polk Award for excellence in journalism twice, in 1971 and 1974. In 1971, he wrote about the Pakistani genocide in then-East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) as New Delhi bureau chief (1969–1973). Upon becoming Southeast Asia correspondent (1973–1975), he covered the Vietnam War.^[9]

Following years of combat, Schanberg wrote in The New York Times about the departure of the Americans and the coming regime change, writing about the Cambodians that "it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." A dispatch he wrote on April 13, 1975, written from Phnom Penh, ran with the headline "Indochina without Americans: for most, a better life."^[10]

Writing about his experiences following the Khmer Rouge takeover, Schanberg acknowledged that "I watched many Cambodian friends being herded out of Phnom Penh. Most of them I never saw again. All of us felt like betrayers, like people who were protected and didn't do enough to save our friends. We felt shame. We still do.", and utterly condemned the "maniacal Khmer Rouge guerrillas".^[11] He was one of the few American journalists to remain behind in Phnom Penh after the city fell. He and his assistant were threatened with death, and took sanctuary in the French embassy. Two weeks later, he left by truck for Thailand.^[12]

Later life

Schanberg won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his Cambodia coverage. The citation reads, "For his coverage of the Communist takeover in Cambodia, carried out at great risk when he elected to stay at his post after the fall of Phnom Penh."^[13] His 1980 book The Death and Life of Dith Pran was about the struggle for survival of his colleague Dith Pran in the Khmer Rouge regime. The book inspired the 1984 film The Killing Fields in which Schanberg was played by Sam Waterston.^[12]

Schanberg served as the Times metropolitan editor (1977–1980) before joining the editorial pages as a columnist specializing in the

Between 1986 and 1995, he was an associate editor and columnist for Newsday. He covered the United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs hearings and became engrossed in the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue; writing for Penthouse, The Village Voice and The Nation, Schanberg became a leading advocate of the "live prisoners left behind" theory in that matter. He published many articles on the subject and outlined reasons why no POWs were ever found, alleging that government officials never seriously investigated reports of live POWs due to fear of public outrage, and to save embarrassment and prevent damage to their reputations and careers. He further said in his articles that the Vietnamese never admitted to holding prisoners in order to be accepted by the international community, and that they'd initially tried to ransom them for reparations once the war ended.^[16]

In 1992, Schanberg received the