John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist, author and filmmaker. Born in Australia, based in the United Kingdom, he has covered with distinction the reality behind the major conflicts of the last half-century, from the "lies" spun about the Vietnam War to the "illegal occupation" of Palestine and the "criminal invasion" of Iraq.
He is an outspoken critic of the "censorship" in Britain and the United States and often quotes journalist Claud Cockburn, who said: "Never believe anything until it has been officially denied." Indeed, the fate of some of Pilger's own works over the years is a case study in the restrictions journalists face in the "free" media. For example, his 1979 film Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia exposed how the US bombing of the country provided the catalyst for the rise of the brutal Pol Pot regime. It was shown in almost 60 countries but never in the US.
Another documentary, Cambodia: The Betrayal, won Pilger an Emmy award in 1991 on the basis of a single US showing very late at night when most people were asleep. "It was worthy of a prize but not an audience," he said.
In 2002 for the documentary Palestine is Still the Issue, he faced a barrage of complaint letters, phone calls and even death threats from supporters of Israel. The film was referred to the Independent Television Commission (ITC), which not only cleared Pilger of charges of bias but even praised the work for its "integrity" and "thoroughness of research". Strangely, a lot of the abuse he received came from the US, where his film was never allowed to be shown.
In more recent times, the 71-year-old Pilger has stood out from the media pack with his powerful critique of President Barack Obama, whom he describes as a "very fine hypnotist" and a "public relations creation".
In his writings, he has famously branded the US as "the world's leading rogue state" and welcomed the arrival of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks as one of the most "exciting developments" in ordinary people's right to call "secret power" to account. His impressive work has won Pilger countless prizes, including British journalism's highest award, twice — that of Journalist of the Year — and also the UN Media Peace Prize.
The Australian muckraker talks to Weekend Review about his upcoming documentary The War You Don't See, the dangers of a "free" media which promotes war and the "colonial mess" in Afghanistan.
Can you talk about your new documentary ‘The War You Don't See'?
This is a film about war and the media: the role of journalism in the reporting and making of wars. The film is partly historical, tracing the advent of "public relations" as a euphemism for propaganda during the First World War and its incorporation into the reporting of subsequent wars. The film deals with today's conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and shows how "objective journalism", such as that of the BBC, is often little more than the view of the government and deliberately excludes dissenting voices, even though these may represent the majority view of viewers and listeners at home.
War correspondents such as Rageh Omar, formerly of the BBC, are interviewed, and famous American news anchors such as Dan Rather, ex-CBS. The editor-in-chief of ITV News (formerly ITN), David Mannion, defends the mainstream news, along with the Head of Newsgathering at the BBC, Fran Unsworth. The new journalism of whistle-blowers, notably WikiLeaks, is examined; and previously unseen footage makes the point that the best war reporting is rarely "embedded".
Lately, with incidents such as the Gaza flotilla assault, Palestine's image in some Western media outlets appears to have become more sympathetic. Is there a cause for optimism?
Yes, I think it is. My sense is that there is a great deal of sympathy for Palestine among individual journalists, who, curiously, often act differently in their working lives, adhering to media structures that are inherently pro-Israel. That said, Israel's behaviour is now so demonstrably outrageous — and criminal — that the cracks in the Western media wall are appearing.
You have spoken about the ‘great media hoopla' that elevated President Obama ‘to the status of Princess Diana'. Why did you say that?
Obama is largely a public relations creation. He is Brand Obama, who, following the Bush years, made people feel good and optimistic. Alas, many failed to look beneath the packaging, especially that which advertised him as antiwar. Obama has accelerated Bush's wars and started at least three of his own. He has overseen the growing police state in the US, which is now effectively ruled by an ascendant Pentagon — the military and its beneficiaries. Princess Diana never really harmed anyone except herself, so my comparison was unfair. Obama's war and domestic policies harm a great many people; in truth, he is no different from any other American president leading a system devoted to what is now called "perpetual war".
Many have drawn similarities between the wars in Afghanistan and the previous one in Vietnam. From your own experience, how do you compare the media coverage of the two conflicts?
I think the real comparison is with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Nato/US invasion is a rerun of that. When the Soviets left after ten years, the human and material destruction was enormous. The record of the US and its "allies" is similar and becoming worse; hardly a day passes without some piece of tricksy war technology killing the poorest people on Earth.
The similarity with Vietnam is the power of the resistance to endure and American generals' wilful misunderstanding of this, yet again.
Earlier this year a confidential CIA document that ended up on WikiLeaks noted how ‘Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanising' the mission in Afghanistan for Western European audiences. A few months later, ‘Time' magazine ran the controversial cover of an Afghan woman with her nose cut off and the words: ‘What happens if we leave Afghanistan?' In your opinion, is such coverage deliberate and, if so, who is behind it?
Well, it was clearly deliberate in the CIA document and the author of the Time article was personally connected to the US structure in Kabul. This is familiar "black propaganda". I interviewed the head of the British military recently and he made the point about the Taliban's treatment of women; it was a justification for Britain fighting in Afghanistan, yet again. When I pointed out that his warlord and druglord "allies" had an equally gruesome record of terrorising women, he suggested I was peddling Taliban propaganda. In other words, the case for that war rests on hot air. It is a colonial mess with the rationale of strategic gain and access to resources and, perhaps most important, to "demonstrate" Western imperial might at a time of economic decline.
Keeping in mind the media's supportive role in the invasion of Iraq and other bloody conflicts, which is more dangerous: Overt media censorship under a totalitarian regime or the kind of invisible censorship one encounters in ‘free' societies?
Well, they both have the same effect — deception. The more powerful propaganda is that of "free" societies, where people cannot be instructed to think a certain way under pain of punishment. So they are co-opted with, as Edward Bernaysk, the founder of modern public relations, described, "false realities". The excellent news is that this isn't working. Most people in Western countries want their governments to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel to get out of Palestine.
Syed Hamad Ali is an independent writer based in London.
