Meet the journos

Phnom Penh’s nightly toll of alcohol-fuelled tragedy and mayhem provides the grist for morning news shows and a sometimes dangerous job for a group of young journalists About midnight on a street corner in Tuol Kork, a crowd gathers around two men after a motorcycle accident. One of the men is limping. The other, the louder and more belligerent, covers his bleeding mouth and has a wound over his right eye. He also has a gun holstered at his waist. Amid the onlookers are a handful of journalists who film the scene on handheld digital cameras. In other countries you might call them ambulance chasers, but in Cambodia they usually arrive well before the medics. “He’s drunk,” says one of the reporters pointing to the belligerent man. “They always are. And look at his waist, he’s got a gun. He must be a cop.”