REVIEW BY AUSTIN WHITTEN
Tell Me No Lies — Investigative Journalism And its Triumphs
Edited by John Pilger
Jonathan Cape, 2004
626 pages, $35 (tpb)
In the introduction to his eminently readable new book, John Pilger states that he wanted to honour the "forgotten" work of journalists by selecting works that continue to inspire rather than those designed to commemorate a journalist's fame.
The 28 selections under 23 headings — five are grouped under "Reporting the Truth about Iraq" — range in length from five to 48 pages. They are arranged chronologically, starting in 1945 with a powerful piece by Martha Gellhorn, one of the first reporters to visit Dachau. Gellhorn's style is Hemingwayesque, not surprisingly, as she was married to the great writer at one time.
Pilger utilised a broad working definition of investigative journalism — more than just "detective work", he selects journalism that "bears witness and investigates ideas".
Two selections are mini-essays: "Upside Down", by Eduardo Galeano, described by Pilger as "one of Latin America's most daring journalists". Galeano, a writer, historian and poet, mixes reportage, satire and history to paint an upside-down world where international bodies "practice international terrorism ... against the poor of all countries, with a cold-blooded professionalism that would make the best of the bomb throwers blush."
The second "essay" is a selection of writings by Edward Said, under the heading, "Covering Islam and Terrorism". Said died as Pilger was assembling his book.
By far, the largest number of investigations involve crimes committed by governments, reflecting Pilger's lifelong interest in the biggest, deadliest acts of terrorism and crimes against humanity.
The most heinous crimes described in the book are genocidal: Dachau; Indonesia — Mark Curtis's "Complicity in a Million Deaths"; Rwanda — Linda Malvern's "A People Betrayed"; Hiroshima — Wilfred Burchett's "The Atomic Plague" (Burchett was the first outside reporter to visit Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped. He was the first to report on the deadly effects of radiation poisoning whose existence was vehemently denied by the US); Vietnam — James Cameron's "Through the Looking Glass"; East Timor — Brian Toohey & Marian Wilkinson's "The Timor Papers"; and Iraq — five articles on the current situation in Iraq by various writers, including Felicity Arbuthnot, Robert Fisk, and Jo Wilding.
Reading so many stories about massive acts of state terrorism has a cumulative effect — more anger-provoking than numbing. I could glimpse the anger and passion of the person who put together the compilation, often displayed in his writings and documentaries. I came to understand Pilger's desire to celebrate the "honourable exceptions", the "men and women whose disrespect for authoritarianism has allowed them to alert their readers to vital, hidden truths".
At last year's anti-war rally in the Domain in Sydney, Pilger turned to the media section and demanded that they tell the truth, "Blood will be on your hands if you don't."
Pilger, of course, has been "rewarded" for his principles by the owners of media in the country of his birth by being blacklisted. His articles are not printed in Australia's mainstream media, he is not interviewed, his packed-out appearances are not reported and even his visits to his home city of Sydney are not recorded.
The book's selections also include lesser crimes of state terrorism, nonetheless horrific. The story of the My Lai massacre, as told by Seymour Hirsh with follow-up interviews he conducted with US soldiers who were at My Lai, is even more vivid in light of what is now taking place in Iraq. Other selections deal with South African death squads during Apartheid, the slaughter of Palestinian families in Lebanon in the camps of Sabra and Chatila; the "dirty war" of Chechnya; and the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, reported by Amira Hass.
Five other selections can be categorised as "other government crimes and despicable policies". They report on the McCarthy era in the US; the smear campaign against Arthur Scargill, head of Britain's National Union of Mineworkers; the Lockerbie cover-up where Libya was blamed and Iran let off the hook due to a US agenda that favoured Iran at the time; the "stolen" first presidential election of George W Bush; and the policy of "global dominance" formulated by Bush's offsiders.
Finally, four selections turn their attention to crimes committed by industries — the funeral industry (by Jessica Mitford); exploitation of refugees in Germany; US corporate slaughterhouse owners' atrocities; and the Thalidomide story — how makers and distributors of the drug fought compensation for its victims born with birth defects.
Pilger's twin goals — to honour honourable journalists and to inspire others — are well served. This is collection that should help many recognise good investigative journalism, which challenges power rather than jumping into bed with it.
John Pilger silences critics who accuse him of a one-sided bias by supplying one of his favourite quotations in the first paragraph of the introduction. It answers those who think an occasional journalistic offering from the "other side" is "fair and balanced" news, rather than a phony veneer of objectivity. US journalist T.D Allman wrote that "Genuinely objective journalism not only gets the facts right, it gets the meaning of events right."
And how do we know if the meaning of events have been gotten right? "It is validated not only by 'reliable sources', but by the unfolding of history. It is journalism that 10, 20, 50 years after the fact still holds up a true and intelligent mirror to events". Pilger has compiled a genuinely objective journalistic work. We can only hope that it will be hugely successful, followed by a second, third, fourth — a whole encyclopedic set of — volumes. They are sorely needed.
A quote from a Bush administration figure, reported in the October 17 New York Times, has reverberated around the world. The Bush spokesperson told the Times writer "that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community', which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
The Bush spokesperson is correct, but only if journalists are allowed to continue to blindly service those who desire to shape our reality in service of the personal agendas of the powerful. John Pilger shows his readers the kind of journalism that we need in order to return to a reality that is not born of power-hungry madness.
From Green Left Weekly, November 17, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.