My Sordid Love Affair with Journalism
Excerpts from Sympathy for the Devil: A Foreign Correspondent Inside Pol Pot’s Cambodia
Copyright Nate Thayer. No republication in whole or part without prior written permission of the author
By Nate Thayer
Journalism and I have a love affair that will never be extinguished.
From the beginning, I was the perfect specimen to be a journalist. It has consumed me, for every minute of every day.
I have always been eager to go anywhere where something of import or fascination is occurring and fraternize with the interesting people who were the protagonists, at any time.
At the beginning, I was willing to die. I had little concern for making money.
The absence of love of money and fear of death are often the crucial makings of a good foreign correspondent.
A dirty little secret is most successful foreign correspondents have either no or dysfunctional families, no other obligations, and few other talents outside of journalism. And few who rely on them, save for their editors. They travel constantly and without advance warning. Properly organized marriages and family are disproportionately rare.
We are not, as a control group, upstanding members of the healthier end of properly organized societies.
Like Communism and God, one has to make a choice between the two. Continue reading