Many reports come directly from Vietnam, but gathering news under its repressive regime is difficult and dangerous. Peter Dao says he depends on clandestine corespondents to secretly e-mail dispatches to the U.S. via the Internet. Dao says these sources send two kinds of stories. Dao, a former official with South Vietnam's government in the 1970s, was himself held in a communist re-education camp after his country's fall. He narrowly escaped from Vietnam on a perilous voyage by boat in 1983.
Political passions motivate most Vietnamese journalists.
Few, if any, worked in the media back home. One editor, for example, is a former lieutenant in the South Vietnamese army. But community activist Bich Nuwinn says the anti-Communist slant of these newspapers does raise issues of fairness. The commitment to political change by Vietnamese journalists was exemplified by a dramatic event nine years ago. But he never returned.