In Print, Another Vietnam War

The Vietnam War ended 27 years ago, but the battle against communism is raging on in the pages of newspapers throughout Little Saigon.

Vietnam Tu Do is one of them, a Vietnamese-language paper that reaches only 3,000 readers and is delivered by an elderly woman on a bicycle. But what it lacks in resources it makes up for with an unmistakable loathing of communism. The front page is filled with headlines such as “Vietnam Communists Poison the Population” and “The Corruption of Communism.”

“They have destroyed and tricked us. They’ve bankrupted our country and made our people suffer,” said the publisher, Khoi Nguyen, from his newsroom above a hair salon in Westminster. “My policy is to overcome the communists.”

His editorial mission is far from unique. Some 45 newspapers and magazines, and roughly a dozen radio programs, fiercely compete to serve Southern California’s 300,000 Vietnamese Americans, most of them in or near Orange County’s Little Saigon. Some of these media outlets have built loyal followings by fanning the flames of hatred that many Vietnamese immigrants feel toward their homeland’s communist government.

Papers such as Vietnam Tu Do (“Free Vietnam”) not only criticize Vietnam’s government, but also take aim at those in Little Saigon who the editors believe have communist leanings or who even tolerate communism.

To them, communist sympathizers and conspiracies abound. Activist Steve Linh Nguyen (no relation to the publisher) was accused of having communist ties because he organized walkathons that raised money for victims of flooding in Vietnam. Several Little Saigon musicians were branded traitors for taking their acts on tour in Vietnam. A Westminster city councilman was accused of taking clandestine trips to Vietnam that he insists never occurred.

Some Embarrassment

Some in Little Saigon, especially younger people, express embarrassment about the level of journalism.

To them, the papers practice a brand of redbaiting that has long divided Little Saigon. They say such a slant makes it more difficult for the community to move beyond the Vietnam War and deal with more contemporary issues, such as poverty and crime.

“When there’s a person who takes a leadership role, they get discredited in the media,” said Phu Nguyen, 25 (also no relation), head of a Vietnamese student group who in recent months has been branded a communist on a radio show. “No one wants to take [a leadership] position. They want to step back. It contributes to why we don’t have a dynamic unifying leader.”

Vietnam Tu Do, along with other weeklies such as the Vietnam Post and Lap Truong (“Principle”), are the most stridently anti-communist. The news racks also contain several newspapers published by former political prisoners, which are favorites of exiles who spent time in Vietnamese reeducation camps. At night, Vietnamese-language hosts in the mold of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly take to the airwaves, leasing air time on half a dozen radio call-in shows punctuated by anti-communist rhetoric.

The target audience is first-generation immigrants with limited language skills and seemingly unlimited contempt for communism.

The Vietnamese-language media have an unusual ability to mobilize the public. In 1999, the owner of a video store in Little Saigon placed a communist Vietnamese flag and a picture of Ho Chi Minh, the late North Vietnamese leader reviled by many immigrants, inside his shop.

The anti-communist media pounced on the story and helped spark a 53-day demonstration in front of the store that drew international attention. At its height, 20,000 people converged on the Bolsa Avenue strip mall, forcing police in riot gear to close off streets and keep order.

Few people can better attest to the power of the Little Saigon press than Tony Lam. He made national headlines in 1992 when he was elected to the Westminster City Council, becoming the first Vietnamese American elected to public office in the United States.

The English-language media hailed him as a trailblazer with a Horatio Alger story. He immigrated to the United States in 1975, part of a wave of refugees reaching Camp Pendleton after the fall of Saigon. To support his family, he pumped gas, stocked groceries and sold life insurance before opening a successful restaurant in Garden Grove.

But the Vietnamese-language press took a more skeptical view. Within a few years, he was a favorite target of some weekly papers, which accused him of everything from cheating on his wife to treason.

By 1999, Lam was regularly labeled a communist sympathizer and even an agent for the Vietnamese government. Several newspapers said Lam gave a general from the Vietnam military a tour of Little Saigon, which Lam insists never occurred.

Lam, 66, blames the local Vietnamese media for turning people against him. “They attack me all the time,” Lam said. “I’m sick and tired of it. They think this is a country of democracy, but they don’t understand that there are certain limits. They just continue to pound people.” He said there is little he can do to fight back. Because he is a public figure, it would be difficult to win a defamation suit with the heavy burden of proof.

Lam, who took office with a goal of bringing his community together, now says his high profile exacted a heavy price, and he announced in August that he would not seek reelection.

A Shoestring Crusade

The newsroom of Vietnam Tu Do fills a cramped space above a shopping plaza in the heart of Little Saigon. Khoi Nguyen is the founder, publisher, editor and advertising manager of the free weekly.

Puffing on a cigarette as he thumbs through a recent edition, Nguyen, 68, makes no apologies for his crusading.

“I want to overturn the communists.”

Vietnam Tu Do is basically a two-person operation: Nguyen, who uses the pen name Duy Sinh, edits the stories and sells the advertising, while his wife, a cosmetologist by day, designs the pages at night.

He relies on a network of stringers, including a supermarket checker (who alerted him to the communist Vietnamese flag inside the video store), a postal worker and several retirees. Nguyen hasn’t been afraid to go after people he suspects of communist leanings or corruption.

His paper labeled community activist Tuan Anh Ho a “returnee,” in essence a communist sympathizer.

Vietnam Tu Do also alleged that Ho assaulted a woman, threatened to kill a man and “robbed his country’s people.” This prompted a war of words between Vietnam Tu Do and Ho’s own newspaper, Lap Truong, which said Nguyen “worked for the cheapest and dirtiest newspaper.” The case eventually made its way to court -- one of more than a dozen defamation suits filed against Little Saigon newspapers in the last few years.

It fell to Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Gardner to sort out the charges and countercharges involving four newspapers and a radio station.

After three years of wrangling, Gardner ruled in favor of Ho, ordering the other papers to pay him $25,000. But his sharply worded opinion took everyone to task.

“The output of each of the four newspapers ... reeks with irresponsible diatribe,” Gardner wrote.

“Each of them as an editor of a newspaper is an acute embarrassment to the world of responsible press. Their writing as reflected in this case has reduced it to the status of dismal vulgarity.”

Nguyen is unrepentant.

“To do business like the way I want, it is bad business,” he said. “I do it for others to listen to my ideology. I hope my work ... influences people so we can rebuild our homeland.”