Sex workers' rights organisations in Phnom Penh in 2007. Melissa Gira Follow/Flickr. Creative Commons.
I wandered into my first anti-trafficking NGO in Cambodia last winter in the same manner in which I had entered journalism some years earlier: I was curious and it was there. Then suddenly I found myself agreeing to a surprisingly long list of stipulations in order to be granted entry to the facility as a member of the press. Chief among them was that I not photograph or ask questions of clients, which set off my independent media alarm: the interesting story is always the one you’re told doesn’t exist.
My concerns were, and remain, twofold: that the wall between clients and the press positions the organisational version of these women’s life stories as irreproachable. As an American who travelled to Cambodia regularly, I had often seen how English-speaking officials frequently misrepresented Khmer women’s stories, whether out of language differences, Western presumption, or genuine empathy. My other concern was more personal: being unable to photograph or ask detailed questions meant I was banned from doing a good job as a reporter, whose primary job is relaying the stories of others.
