Nate Thayer

DEPT OF SCOOPS: Where’s the Committee to Protect Journalists from each other?-"Talk of the Town"-The New Yorker

DEPT OF SCOOPS

Where’s the Committee to Protect Journalists from each other?

The New Yorker

May 25, 1998

Talk of the Town

By Philip Gourevitch

A George Foster Peabody Award is the broadcasting world’s version of the Pulitzer, and until last Monday, when the fifty-seventh annual awards ceremony was held, at the Waldorf-Astoria, nobody who was honored with a Peabody had ever spurned the distinction. Then Nate Thayer came to town. Thayer is the thirty-eight-year-old Bangkok-based journalist-adventurer who, last July, obtained one of the great scoops of our time by trekking into the Cambodian jungle, attending the show trial of Pol Pot, and trekking out into Thailand with the whole bizarre spectacle on high-quality videotape. Much of that footage was promptly aired by ABC’s “Nightline” in a three-part series, which went on to win one of this year’s Peabody’s for “distinguished achievement and meritorious public service.” And Thayer went from being the first journalist to meet up with Pol Pot in nearly twenty years to being the first to turn down a Peabody.

 

In a letter “formally and unequivocally” rejecting his share in the award, Thayer wrote, “Ted Koppel and ‘Nightline’ literally stole my work, took credit for it, trivialized it, refused to pay me, and then attempted to bully and extort me when I complained. They should not be rewarded for this kind of behavior and I under no circumstances want my name associated with these egregious violations of basic journalistic ethics and integrity.” So last week’s gala luncheon became a split-level ceremony: upstairs, in the Waldorf’s Grand ballroom, Koppel accepted the trophy—the sixth Peabody of his career—while downstairs, in one of the Waldorf’s many saloons, Thayer pleaded his case to the barman, who set up his double scotches for free, explaining, “I like a man with principles.’

Thayer has no quarrel with the series Koppel anchored, or with the fee of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars that, a month ago, ‘Nightline” finally paid him for the use of his footage. But the deal—which he originally negotiated with Koppel over the phone—was for a one-week exclusive on North American television rights only. As Thayer understood it, that meant that he could sell the remaining world broadcast rights and the potentially lucrative still photographs from his encounter with Pol Pot, and that he retained the print-media exclusive to the story, which he had promised to his longtime employer, the far eastern Economic Review, a Hong Kong-based weekly. Thayer says that he chose to work with Koppel “because of his reputation for integrity” and yet “within twenty-four hours the pictures and the story were all over the place. ABC’s public-relations just took it over.”

 

Even before the first “Nightline program on Pol Pot aired, the network’s promotion teams were shipping out photographs made from Thayer’s footage, and video clips were available on the ABC web site, where anybody could simply download them. “Nightline” also allowed a writer from the Times to preview ten minutes of the footage, with the result that Thayer’s scoop—text and photographs appeared on the paper’s front page before his own article for the Review had gone to press. According to a spokeswoman for ABC, this sort of pre-broadcast publicity is normal, and the network did nothing to violate its agreement. If Thayer thinks otherwise, the spokeswoman says, “It might be that he had no idea that this is what happens when you deal with a large news organization.”

 

Thayer does think otherwise. “My main objection is that the industry has taken control of journalists, and part of our job is to fight for the integrity of our profession,” he said last week over more double scotches in a midtown bar. “I’ve just become incredibly disillusioned over the last year.” Sadly, Thayer’s sense of himself as something of a dinosaur is not inaccurate; in the dangerous pursuit of his stories that have made him famous, he has often needed to trust verbal agreements—even with Khmer Rouge cadres—as a matter of life or death. And nobody in the news business seems to recognize that fact better than Ted Koppel. Last October, at the same Waldorf podium where he would claim his latest Peabody award, Koppel addressed a banquet for the Committee to Protect Journalists, paying homage to reporters who risk “ death, or torture, or imprisonment” in violent places under repressive regimes, and he warned that American journalism was equally endangered.—but “more insidiously”—by “the trivialization of our industry.” He said, “We struggle to be first with the obvious…we’re afraid of the competition; afraid of earning less money; afraid of losing our audience.”

Last week, with the ghost of those words hanging in the hall, Koppel kept his Peabody acceptance speech brief. “Nate has chosen not to accept this award, because he has some profound differences with ABC news, with “Nightline”, with me. I’m sorry about that, genuinely sorry,” he said, adding, “While he rejects this award, I don’t want to reject the enormous contribution he made to bringing the world this story.”

 

It was odd hearing Thayer spoken of as having made a “contribution” to the story that he alone had brought out of the Cambodian Jungles. Finding Pol Pot was his biggest scoop, but for ten years, in one groundbreaking story after another, Thayer has not only chronicled Cambodia’s treacherous political history but also done a good deal to shape it. Early last month, for instance, he got word that the Khmer Rouge leaders who had purged Pol Pot, and were keeping him captive, wanted to turn the aging and sickly boss of the killing fields over to “the Americans” for trial; before an international tribunal. “But they didn’t know any Americans,” Thayer recalled. “Just me. I went back in, and spoke with them, and reported their wishes. The Voice of America’s Khmer-language service led the eight-o’clock news with the story on April 15^th. Pol Pot was listening, and a few hours later he was dead.” Thayer grinned, and ran a big hand over his shiny shaved scalp, his narrow eyes seemed to brighten. “ That’s my award,” he said, and laughed. “ I killed Pol Pot.”---Philip Gourevitch

The New York Times The New York Times Opinion APPRECIATIONS The Far Eastern Economic Review

APPRECIATIONS

The Far Eastern Economic Review

By HELENE COOPER

Published: November 3, 2004

or someone who grew up dreaming about swashbuckling journalists reporting from far-flung places, there was no greater model than The Far Eastern Economic Review, a weekly founded in Shanghai in 1946 and put out by a raffish staff of adventurers.

To me, the review's reporters embodied what journalism was about. There was Bertil Lintner, the Swedish buccaneer who spent a year walking along the Chinese-Burma border during the 1980's with his wife. Their baby was born along the way, and Mr. Lintner continued to file mammoth articles that gave voice to a culture nobody would pay anyone to cover. There was John MacBeth, the New Zealander who kept reporting from East Timor to Jakarta even after his leg was amputated, battling the Indonesian strongman Suharto. There was Nayan Chanda, the Bengali from Calcutta, among the last reporters left in Saigon when North Vietnamese tanks invaded the city. Mr. Chanda was filing his article as Communist tanks were crashing through the city gates. He kept working until two Communists walked up to him and literally pulled the plug of the telex machine.

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And then there was Nate Thayer. My hero. During the 1980's and 90's, the mercurial Mr. Thayer hung out with the Cambodian resistance, dodging Khmer bullets in the jungles around Angkor Wat, fleeing Vietnamese troops across the Thai border and even at one point inadvertently running over a land mine, which exploded and destroyed his pickup truck. In 1997, he finally got the reward he had been seeking: Khmer commanders took him deep into the jungle, where he found Pol Pot.

Last week, Dow Jones, publisher of The Far Eastern Economic Review, announced it was shutting it down and laying off 80 people. The current Nov. 4 issue will be the last of its kind; while Dow Jones is keeping the brand name alive, FEER will be a monthly with essays from academics and government officials: not a Nate Thayer in the bunch.

Four years ago, on my way home from Beijing, I met the FEER reporter Murray Hiebert on the plane. He was fresh out of a Kuala Lumpur prison, where he had just spent a month for reporting about a Malaysian judge's wife who had sued an international school for kicking her son off the debate team. I was star-struck; here was one of my heroes in the flesh, still battle-scarred. Murray was bashful. "I think most journalists should go to jail for a month," he said later. "You have no idea how much you respect press freedom after that."

HELENE COOPER

 

Adages; Marketing the news: the selling of Pol Pot.(Ted Koppel and ABC in lawsuit)

 

Adages; Marketing the news: the selling of Pol Pot.(Ted Koppel and ABC in lawsuit)

Advertising Age

November 18, 2002 | Linnett, Richard; Friedman, Wayne

Byline: Richard Linnett, contributing: wayne friedman

Earlier this year, Ted Koppel survived an attempt by ABC to bounce him and ``Nightline'' off the air for David Letterman's ``Late Show,'' but will he be able to defend himself against a $30 million lawsuit?

Adages has learned that Mr. Koppel and ABC are being sued for $30 million in punitive damages and unspecified compensatory damages by Nate Thayer, a freelance reporter who alleges that they stole his exclusive story and that the ``misappropriation of credit deprived Thayer of the advertising value of his name.''

Thayer broke what has been called one of the great scoops of the last century. At the heart of the lawsuit is the question of who has the right to market a scoop to the rest of the media: The outlet airing the story or the reporter who got it?

In 1997, after a decade-long search, Thayer finally tracked down Pol Pot, who was believed to be dead, deep in the jungles of northern Cambodia. It was the first time Pol Pot had been photographed and interviewed in 20 years. And it was the last. The Cambodian dictator, who was said to be responsible for the deaths of about 3 million Cambodians, died under mysterious circumstances a year after Thayer filmed him. Thayer's video footage of the interview with Pol Pot aired on ``Nightline'' on July 28, 1997.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Oct. 30, alleges that Koppel and ABC breached a contract with Thayer that allowed for limited use of the Pol Pot footage. Thayer would get credit for the images and be paid $350,000 for the story. The agreement, the suit says, was made verbally in front of witnesses, and Koppel promised that ABC lawyers would draft a final document. ``Don't worry,'' Koppel said to Thayer, according to the complaint. ``You must trust me, journalist to journalist.''

``Instead of complying with those terms,'' said Mel Weiss, partner at Milberg Weiss Berhad Hynes & Lerach, New York, which is representing Thayer, ``ABC immediately created a frame grab, used it without giving Thayer credit, fixed ABC's logo on the photo saying `ABC News exclusive,' forwarded the frame to news services, posted it on the ABC Web site, gave a transcript of the video and a 10 minute portion of it to The New York Times, and broadcast the video on monitors throughout the streets of Cambodia, which basically destroyed Thayer's commercial viability with this product.'' The suit accuses Koppel and ABC of copyright infringement, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, tortious interference with business relations and fraud, among other things.

According to the complaint, Thayer never received a written contract. He claims an ABC lawyer told him the reason he couldn't get a contract that day was because the lawyer ``did not know how to type'' and he had ``no secretary.'' Thayer also claims he did not receive payment until 10 months later, when ABC sent $350,000 to defuse the controversy after Thayer refused to accept a Peabody Award that he was to share with ABC for the Pol Pot report.

Along with damages, Thayer is demanding the defendants be required to pay him ``the profits and other economic benefits realized.'' Profits would include advertising revenue ``Nightline'' got the nights it aired the footage, according to a person with knowledge of the lawsuit.

``In 1997 ABC News agreed to pay NateThayer the sizable sum of $350,000 for the rights to use his footage of former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot,'' said Jeffrey Schneider, VP, ABC News. ``Despite the fact that ABC provided prominent and repeated credit and generous remuneration for his work, Mr. Thayer initiated a five-year barrage of complaints coupled with repeated demands for more money that culminate in this filing, in what is essentially a contract dispute. We find it unfortunate that Mr. Thayer and his lawyers have attempted to attack the good name of one of America's most respected news broadcasts as well as a journalist of impeccable reputation. We look forward to the opportunity to prove in court that Thayer's claims have no merit.''

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CAPTION(S):

Swimming to Cambodia: Ted Koppel creates a news event in Phnom Penh with footage of Thayer's interview with Pol Pot. * Thayer: Through a minefield

Confined, Pol Pot Tells Of Feeling 'Bit Bored': New York Times

Confined, Pol Pot Tells Of Feeling 'Bit Bored'

New York Times

By SETH MYDANS
Published: October 24, 1997

 Confined to a wooden hut with nothing to read and nothing to do, Pol Pot, the man who created the Khmer Rouge ''killing fields'' in Cambodia in the 1970's, says he is getting bored.

Old, sick and weary, he said in an interview published today that he often did not have the strength to get out of bed or even to listen to one of his favorite radio stations, the Voice of America.

''I feel a little bit bored, but I have become used to that,'' he said in the interview, conducted last Thursday by Nate Thayer, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. It was the first interview Pol Pot had given in nearly 20 years.

''You know, I can't even play with my daughter or my wife anymore because in the morning, even after I wake up, I can't get out of bed,'' he complained. ''I stay still while my wife occupies herself with gardening and sewing. My daughter gathers wood and works in the kitchen.''

Pol Pot, who said he is 72, has spent the last 19 years in the jungle, since fleeing a Vietnamese invasion that ended his four-year rule of terror in which at least one million Cambodians died.

In July his Khmer Rouge followers turned against him and condemned him to live out his days under house arrest in a small hut in their stronghold of Anlong Veng, where the interview was conducted.

Pre-publication excerpts made public on Wednesday showed him to be unrepentant, telling Mr. Thayer that he may have had made some ''mistakes'' but that ''my conscience is clear.''

In the full interview, Pol Pot offered a glimpse into his feelings about his place in history as well as his small joys and daily irritations.

Rejected by his comrades and confined to his home with his wife and 12-year-old daughter, he said: ''For me it is over. Over politically and over as a human being.''

He complained that his hut is infested with mosquitoes and other insects, that his books have been taken away and that ''I have nothing to do now.''

The interview came at a time of renewed suffering in Cambodia, where Pol Pot's legacy of violence, political chaos and shattered lives continues to overwhelm attempts at re-establishing a civil society.

After a coup in July, the country's latest strongman, Hun Sen, has quashed and sometimes killed his opponents and frightened away foreign businesses, driving Cambodians further into the poverty Pol Pot bequeathed them.

From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot systematically dismantled Cambodian society, destroying industry, civil service, education, religion, commerce and culture in a radical attempt to impose a collectivist agrarian utopia. At least one million and as many as two million Cambodians died of torture, execution, starvation, disease and overwork.

At one point in the interview, Mr. Thayer wrote, Pol Pot turned to one of his captors and murmured, ''I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.''

Mr. Thayer reported that Pol Pot went so far as to propose that the bones and skulls of his victims that still lie in heaps around Cambodia were actually placed there by the Vietnamese to discredit him.

One of Pol Pot's notable characteristics as a leader was the secrecy -- often described as paranoia -- that led him to hide his identity and frequently change dwellings.

''Since my boyhood I never talked about myself,'' he told Mr. Thayer. ''That was my nature. I was taciturn. I'm quite modest. I don't want to tell people that I'm a leader.''

His birth date has been a matter of dispute. Pol Pot told Mr. Thayer he had been born in January 1925, but had lied about the date to remain eligible for a scholarship.

Like many an old man, his own failing health seemed to interest him as much as his monumental deeds of the past, and Mr. Thayer said Pol Pot steered the conversation in the direction of his illnesses. ''You look at me from the outside, you don't know what I have suffered,'' he said. ''If you allow me, I would like to tell you about my sickness.''

Then he described in intimate detail a frightening night in late 1995 when he suffered what was apparently a stroke.

''One night I got up to go to the bathroom,'' Pol Pot said. ''My left eye was closed. I thought that maybe nothing was wrong. But when I came back my eye just did not work anymore. Now my left side from my head to my toe does not work. And my left eye is 95 percent blind.''

Mr. Thayer reported that Pol Pot spoke of his daughter with ''genuine fatherly affection.''

''She is a good daughter, a good person; she gets along with the others quite well,'' Pol Pot said.

Asked if he thought she would be proud, when she is grown, to say she is the daughter of Pol Pot, he responded: ''I don't know about that. It's up to history to judge.''

A journalistic coup turns sour. (media coverage of interview with Pol Pot in Cambodia)

 

A journalistic coup turns sour. (media coverage of interview with Pol Pot in Cambodia)

American Journalism Review

September 1, 1997 | Heyboer, Kelly

On the television screen, it appeared to be an enviable journalistic coup for all involved: ABC's "Nightline" airing the exclusive first look in 18 years at former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot while little-known journalist Nate Thayer told Ted Koppel and the world how he emerged from the Cambodian jungle with the scoop of his career.

But behind the scenes, the story that made headlines around the world had dissolved into a bitter battle between Thayer and ABC over allegedly broken promises, media ethics and money.

"This is one of the most disheartening experiences of my life," says Thayer, an American covering Asia for the Far Eastern Economic Review and other publications. "It was clearly a mistake to believe people such as ABC would be honorable."

Thayer, who sold the videotape of the Pol Pot show trial he witnessed to "Nightline" for $350,000, now accuses ABC of breaking verbal agreements, stealing his story and costing him significant monetary damage for the loss of potential photo rights. "Nightline" producers say the disagreement, now in the hands of ABC's lawyers, stems from a naive Thayer underestimating the power of the Internet.

The saga began in late July when Thayer, 37, using contacts made in more than a decade of reporting in Asia, talked his way into a Khmer Rouge jungle hideout in northern Cambodia after hearing about a crisis in the core leadership of the fading Communist party that once ran the country.

Khmer Rouge agents smuggled Thayer and David McKaige, an Asiaworks cameraman, from Thailand to Cambodia. The pair, both working on a freelance basis, had requested an interview with Pol Pot, the "Killing Fields' leader believed to be responsible for more than a million deaths during the late 1970s. Because Pol Pot had not been seen by Western journalists in nearly two decades, Thayer and McKaige were unsure what to expect when Khmer Rouge agents led them to a jungle shed on July 25.

"All of the sudden, two minutes later, not only was there Pol Pot, but a mass people's tribunal that was put on for us," Thayer says.

Thayer and McKaige rushed back to Bangkok knowing they had potentially explosive material from a staged trial proving Pol Pot was not only alive, but denounced by his followers and sentenced to lifetime house arrest. By the following day, rumors of their presence at the trial were flying, and the pair say they were fielding offers from around the world for exclusives.

Elizabeth Becker, one of two journalists who conducted the last interview with Pol Pot in 1978 (when she was with the Washington Post), says that when she heard a reporter had finally seen the elusive leader, she assumed it was Thayer.

"It must have been Nate," says Becker, now the New York Times" deputy Washington editor. "He is a maniac about this story.... He's just been crazed."

Holed up in a Bangkok hotel room with thousands of phone calls pouring in, Thayer says he decided to give the Far Eastern Economic Review an exclusive on the text of the story and still pictures of the trial for his regular rate of less than $3,000, even though the magazine didn't finance or assign him the story.

Meanwhile, with about five days until the magazine's next publication date, the red-hot videotape of the event was up for grabs, and a bidding war ensued.

"I was obviously hoping to get compensated for what was 14 years of my life's work. I chose 'Nightline because I believed 'Nightline' would do the story credibly. They were not by any means the highest bidder," he says.

Koppel and "Nightline" Executive Producer Tom Bettag rushed to Bangkok and completed negotiating an agreement with Thayer for exclusive first rights to air the videotape in North America. Thayer says he was careful to insist that ABC only air the videotape, so the Far Eastern Economic Review would still have the exclusive on the fun story later in the week, and so he could market the still photos he took of Pol Pot separately.

But in the days before "Nightline" aired the tape, Thayer says ABC's pre-publicity department did a frame grab on the video and handed the photos of the trial and the details of his story to papers around the country in an attempt to hype the broadcast. Before his magazine piece was even written, his "exclusive" was in papers around the world.

ABC refused Thayer's last-minute demands that "Nightline" not air the tape, because it was already scheduled and had been previewed on "World News Tonight." Without a written contract with the network, Thayer had allowed himself to get scooped.

"Nightline" executives insist Thayer's lawyers had agreed to allow ABC to feature stills from Thayer's video on its Internet site, abcnews.com, essentially giving the world free access.

"Clearly, at the center of this is, if you are going to put it on the Internet, it's going to go worldwide," says executive producer Bettag. "That's a decision he made."

Thayer denies that he agreed to allow the story on the Internet. Because Thayer's contract with "Nightline" was in the process of being finalized while the three-part broadcast aired (Thayer ultimately refused to sign it), the argument boils down to Thayer's word against that of the ABC business representative who negotiated the deal.

"We genuinely believe that we kept our word top to bottom, and we feel terrible that Nate is that angry and that upset," says Bettag.

On the heels of landing the story of his career, Thayer says he's lost faith in the profession and is disillusioned by the lengths journalists win go to land a good story.

"They wanted this story and promised us everything we asked for," he says. "As soon as they got their hands on the tape they said, 'Fuck you, deal with our lawyers.'... There's a reason why our profession has such a bad reputation."

Bettag laments that the Pol Pot story -- a great piece of journalism -- might be overshadowed by a controversy over a business deal. "'Nightline's' feeling for Nate is one of huge respect for a journalist," Bettag says. "The business just got in the way and left a bad taste in Nate's mouth."

Thayer says he and his cameraman will not take any money from ABC until the network acknowledges that it stole his story. He has yet to collect the agreed upon $350,000 because he won't sign the contract.

"These aren't journalists. These are huge public corporations run by lawyers and public relations people," he says. "I didn't have a penny a week ago, and if I don't have a penny a week from now, I still have my integrity."