Sydney Schanberg, war reporter who covered ‘Killing Fields,’ dies

Sydney Schanberg, war reporter who covered ‘Killing Fields,’ dies

NEW YORK — Sydney Schanberg, a former correspondent for the New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the genocide in Cambodia in 1975 — and whose story of the survival of his assistant inspired the film “The Killing Fields” — has died.

When Communist guerrillas overran the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in the spring of 1975, the Times said, Mr. Schanberg and his assistant Dith Pran refused pleas by their editors to evacuate.

After being reunited in New York, Mr. Schanberg wrote a cover story for the New York Times magazine about Dith’s experience, surviving beatings, starvation and backbreaking labor.