A Life-and-Death Journalism Practitioner

The Orange County Press Club each year awards its most prestigious prize, the Sky Dunlap Award, to a distinguished journalist for lifetime achievement in the profession. This month, the club honored Yen Do, 58, publisher of the Nguoi Viet Daily News, the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in the nation.

A combat correspondent during the Vietnam War, Do fled Vietnam after the Communist takeover in 1975 and started the Nguoi Viet newspaper in his garage 20 years ago. It was a one-man, uphill operation. As editor, publisher, printer and circulation manager, Do wrote, edited and laid out every story. He inked accent marks over words by hand and hawked copies to refugees on the street.

In two decades under Do, the Little Saigon-based Nguoi Viet has grown to a 34-member staff and 16,000 daily circulation. It has an English section that attracts American-born readers and is distributed in Vietnamese communities across the United States and as far away as Australia and France. Last year Do launched a Web site.

Such an achievement would be worthy of an award. But the press club board chose to honor Do for an additional reason: his courage. Some of the most courageous journalists in the world are those writing for the Vietnamese-language press. Since 1981, five Vietnamese immigrant journalists in the United States have been murdered by right-wing extremists. The journalists, including Tap Van Pham of Garden Grove, were killed for three reasons: They supported reconciliation with Vietnam, accepted advertisements for companies engaged in business with Vietnam, or criticized the Vietnamese anti-communist resistance movement in the United States.

These and other attacks against Vietnamese journalists, including Do, have created a climate of fear and intimidation in the refugee community reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Anti-communist extremists have engaged in a campaign that has stilled freedom of speech.

In 1989, when Do mistakenly showed pictures of Ho Chi Minh’s tomb on television, a mob of 150 gathered outside his newspaper office, set a delivery truck on fire and painted death threats on the wall. Five years later, Nguoi Viet succumbed to mob rule after 300 extremists stormed the newspaper and threatened Do’s life and business.

The angry crowd demanded that Do apologize for defending a trip to Vietnam by Dr. Co Pham, president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Orange County. Do refused to apologize for breaking the “code of silence” in Little Saigon. But he resigned as editor after the mob threatened a boycott.

Boycotts and protests continue in Little Saigon against Westminster Councilman Tony Lam, who has been “redbaited.” Extremists have picketed his Garden Grove restaurant in an attempt to drive his family out of business.

Do should be honored by his community for working under the most trying conditions to promote freedom of the press.