Reporting on Vietnam without the clichés
This is a series of short interviews with media professionals that we're doing in partnership with Asia Undercovered, a newsletter covering news and trends in Asia that aren’t getting enough attention in U.S. media.
These interviews will allow reporters to share their experiences directly, including what it’s like to cover stories that are often under- or misrepresented in the global media, and what their work means in the broader context of the issues and trends in Asia.
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Stories about Vietnam need to go beyond the typical tropes or buzzwords of communism, authoritarianism, and “a war-torn country,” says Vietnamese journalist Sen Nguyen. (Photo supplied by Sen Nguyen)
Welcome to our fourth Asia Undercovered Journalist Q&A. We’re featuring a discussion with Sen Nguyen, a journalist born and raised in Vietnam, and who covers not only her home country, but also the Greater Mekong and Southeast Asia regions.
Sen’s reporting (see her portfolio here) appears in outlets such as SCMP, Al Jazeera and Rest of World and are noteworthy for focusing on communities and issues that don’t often get attention in global media, such as this feature about the hardship that ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia have faced for decades. Sen also covers environmental issues, including the impact of infrastructure projects on local communities, eg. Chinese dams along the Mekong.
Sen shares her unlikely path to becoming a journalist, and the need to recognize journalism as a collaborative, instead of an individual effort.
What has led you to become a journalist, and how would you describe your goals as a reporter?
I don’t really have a typical journalist-calling kind of story. No one in my family is a journalist or does anything remotely related to the profession. They are not fervent readers, prolific writers, articulate speakers or passionate intellects; plus most of them are monolinguals without a university degree.
When I announced that I got a job as a journalist, my father thought it was cool because he thought the journalist badge could invoke respect and fears from others. I corrected him immediately, explaining how that is not what journalism is.
My mother didn’t like the idea because she thinks it is too dangerous and laborious for women and it is the opposite of a calm, easy, risk-free life that she wants for her daughter. Becoming a journalist might have not only been a defiance of their views but also a challenge to my own.
It all started from writing. I used to hate writing, mostly because when I was a student, we were taught to write Vietnamese essays following the exact arguments, forms and formulas given by our teachers. There was only one correct answer. But when I started studying for IELTS, the global English standardized test, I fell in love with writing in English. No one was giving me any mold to fit in – the mold is mine and so are the thoughts, insights and imperfections.
But the plight of an ESL writer is that I will never be regarded with the perfection of a native speaker, whatever that means. Though to a certain extent, I agree. Not one day has passed since I started to regularly use this language where I did not learn something new, including things about my own region.
Just like how this language has opened doors for me and challenges my pre-existing perspectives and bias, I came into this profession hoping I can do the same for my readers with my reporting about Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
How does your own background connect to the work you do? What value does your heritage/connections to the place/issues you are covering add to your reporting?
My upbringing and personal experience have made me more acutely aware of social and environmental issues, [which are] the main topics of my coverage about Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
I come from a working class family and we used to move a lot when I was younger. Most of the places I grew up in were either claustrophobic or windowless, or both.
One didn’t even have a toilet, so we had to find ways to discard our waste. Another was so small that the toilet was two steps away from the bed in our studio apartment. I did not have my own room until I moved out at 18.
My mom used to run unmanned little cafes, so I was taught from an early age that child labor was needed to put food on the table. She was also stricken by depression and suicidal attempts that were difficult for me to compute as a kid. I also witnessed and personally experienced domestic and sexual violence. The list goes on.
While I have not been privileged on many fronts, I am in others. My parents made sure I was educated and never went to sleep starved. I belong to the biggest ethnic group in Vietnam so I certainly have ethnicity privilege. I am able-bodied so I don’t live with physical abnormalities in a deeply disabled-unfriendly world.
As a professional journalist, these experiences leave a profound mark in me. They enable me to be more sensitive to the complexities and intersection of issues: class, gender, health status, cultural context; and to be cognizant of the fact that there is often no black and white. Unpacking the nuances is a necessary pain to understand the world we live in.
What are your thoughts on how mainstream American/English language media covers Vietnam, or the Greater Mekong Region? What do you wish they would do better?
I’m not a trained expert or critic to be given the authority to give this question a satisfying answer. Being a Vietnamese or Southeast Asian does not make me an expert of my country and culture, so I’m always grateful for learning opportunities that make me see things in a new light.
I have not done a systemic, large-scale and in-depth analysis of all the mainstream coverage about Vietnam or the Mekong Region so my views are based on my exposure to coverage that appear in my news feeds, my research and in my network.
Overall, I admire the work of many English-language reporters who bring competence and integrity into their work. As a difficult reader, I’m interested in writings that cure my boredom, ignorance and shortsightedness and their work often don’t fail me in these regards.
However, there is a pervasive, yawn-inducing phenomenon: Vietnam coverage that cannot escape the typical tropes or buzzwords, including communism, authoritarianism, and “a war-torn country,” even in some stories about issues that don’t necessarily have anything to do with these topics.
In my humble opinion, while it can be informative and useful, the intentional or unintentional act of trapping stories about Vietnam in these contexts keeps global readers in a bubble, cripples their world views and inhibits them from seeing other urgent problems and interesting nuances that Vietnam has. This is the area, I think, in which I and many other local journalists can and have been contributing to, with reportage about gender inequality, environmental destruction, vulnerable working class, and many other issues.
Some argue that international readers would only care about stories on Vietnam if they see these familiar buzzwords. But who is it that familiarized them with these catchwords in the first place? And is it the journalist’s job to underscore and immortalize readers’ confirmation bias? You can do your own research to answer the first question, but the answer to the second is a resounding no.
What I would also like to add is that good reporting doesn’t have singular heroes – whatever form of journalism you are consuming is a team effort, even this newsletter. Newsmakers, interview subjects, analysts, editors, copyeditors, proofreaders, fact checkers, local fixers, technical and language interpreters, and tip-off providers, etc. The journalist is a crucial actor in this ecosystem but they rely on many others to do their job. This applies to both local and foreign correspondence.
Any goals for the rest of 2021? What kinds of stories do you hope to report or work on this year?
For the rest of this year and going forward, I will just continue to push through and hone the skills needed for my job: research, data literacy, writing, as well as relationship and narrative building. It is also fun to do these things in both Vietnamese and English most of the time too.
Many stories are in the oven at the moment, ready to be served to the hungry public. I recently became one of 12 journalists awarded the Mekong Data Journalism Fellowship by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the East-West Center to report on critical water security issues in the region. On top of individual reporting, my other colleagues and I are also collaborating on projects about migration and women’s issues.
Ultimately, I don’t expect readers to love my work. I just want them to, at least, consider it.