NYT Journo Schandberg Who Inspired ‘The Killing Fields’ Dies at 82

Sydney Hillel Schanberg was known for his coverage of the 1975 Cambodia war which cost over two million lives.

Sydney Hillel Schanberg of the New York Times in India with Indian Fourth Battalion, Brigade of Guards. (Photo Courtesy: Beyond Killing Fields)

Sydney Hillel Schanberg, the New York Times reporter whose work inspired the movie The Killing Fields breathed his last on Tuesday, the publication claimed in a report. The 82-year-old, who was known for his coverage of the war in Cambodia, died in Poughkeepsie in New York.

Schanberg’s friend who once worked for Times, Charles Kaiser, said that he breathed his last on Tuesday.

Sam Waterson playing Sydney Schanberg in The Killing Fields. (Photo Courtesy: Youtube/Warner Bros Home Entertainment)

While covering the civil war in Cambodia in 1975, Schanberg and his assistant, Dith Pran, refused to follow their editor’s orders and stayed back in the war-torn region.

Their experiences were converted into a an iconic movie called The Killing Fields. Pran was a part of the Cambodian exodus, in which people were forced en masse into the countryside by the Khmer Rouge as they emptied Phnom Penh.

Schanberg won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in Cambodia in 1975.

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Sydney Schanberg (right) stands behind Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi as she speaks to the press in November 1969, early into his posting to India. (Photo Courtesy: Beyond Killing Fields)