Newspaper reports are read aloud daily on radio and on morning television, greatly increasing the reach of the print media in a country with an adult literacy rate of less than 70 per cent. However, the practice highlights the rudimentary state of local broadcast journalism.

The most repected Khmer-language news services are foreign: Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America. In the past their reach was limited by their inability to secure an FM licence, which restricted them to broadcasting on shortwave. More recently they have been able to reach a much wider audience by relaying their news service on the privately-owned Sambok Khmum Radio, better known as Radio Beehive FM 105 MHz. Meanwhile, Sambok Khmum itself has been the subject of licence restrictions for its often critical views of government actions.

Foreign aid funding has assisted the development of some local news programmes, particularly on National Radio Kampuchea (RNK), which broadcasts the ‘Rendezvous’ current affairs programme and ‘Business Edge’, a studio show intended to encourage the growth of small and medium-size entrepreneurs. Depending on funding availability and foreign aid priorities, there are also bursts of AIDS awareness messages, domestic violence prevention campaigns and the like.

Most recently, through a talkback programme implemented with the assistance of ABC Radio Australia with funding support from the Australian Agency for International Development, RNK now has a professionally-trained talkback team which produces the one-hour programme 'Our Life Our Society' twice weekly. This programme is rebroadcast the following day and also relayed live to four provincial FM stations through the Ministry of Information's Provincial Information Service.