The presumption that a liberal media landscape and associated press culture strengthens good governance and human development has approached orthodoxy in the western world. Consistent with this, journalism training has been a central component of media aid strategies in the Global South. This research examines how normative assumptions about journalism roles can interact with ideas about democracy in a training environment and the possible implications of this. It explores parallels between programme elements relating to democracy facilitation and particular role conceptualisations of journalists trained by these programmes, with a specific interest in how this process is borne out in countries where democratisation processes are ongoing. A qualitative-based methodology, using journalism training in Cambodia as a case study, finds some correlations between democracy-related emphases at training level and specific normative orientations among working journalists who participated in these programmes. However, we find that these democratic norm-related orientations of practitioners contain subtle, but key differentiations from those advocated by programme facilitators. A vocational, advocacy-oriented approach to journalism programmes may have contributed to this outcome in a Cambodian context