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Vertaal:
              De wet van Pilger: `Als het officieel is ontkend, dan is het waarschijnlijk waar'
Dinsdag, 14 Oktober, 2008 John Pilger, scourge van onrechtvaardigheid, vecht nog na een halve eeuw van campagnes. Hij schiet zelfs voor Tony Blair neer. Door Ian Burrell Kruis de drempel van John Pilger's huis het Zuid- van Londen en het diepe stapeltapijt geeft zacht onder de voeten uiting. Soothing spanningen van klassieke guitar waft door de lucht en, over mokken thee, grote polemicist onderzoekt het effect van zijn carrière, zijn zinnen die door van een gemberkat mewling worden onderbroken. Deze scène van binnenlandse rust is niet vele politieke tegenstanders van één Pilger, of miljoenen die zijn werk volgen zouden, met de kooi-rammelende campagnevoerder associëren die zich tegen gezagscijfers van Washington gelijkstroom aan de dodende gebieden van Kambodja heeft geplaatst. Er is een halve eeuw verlopen aangezien Pilger als exemplaarjongen op de Zon begon van Sydney en hij draaide 69 vorige Donderdag. Maar hij blijft geageerd door onrechtvaardigheden die hij bij elke draai in Groot-Brittannië en in het buitenland ziet. Veertig jaar nadat hij begon werkend voor de Wereld van Granada in Actie, is hij opgedragen om een nieuwe film te maken onderzoekend de afbeelding van de media van Groot-Brittannië bij oorlog. En in de Nieuwe Staatsman roept hij de politieke onderneming aan rekening, onlangs omheinend bij het nalaten van de belangrijkste partijen om de conflicten van Irak en van Afghanistan op hun conferenties te debatteren. Maar toch heeft hij plaatste zich ook een verse uitdaging, die schijnt om hem met een betekenis van zelf-twijfel gevuld te hebben. „ik ben… begonnen,“ hij kondigt met een splutter van disbelief aan, „om te schrijven wat ik hoop mijn eerste fictie.“ is De auteur van dozijn boeken van journalistiek, heeft hij om een steekproef van deze „inzameling van korte verhalen“ aan zijn uitgever nog aan te bieden. Het „prachtige ding over het schrijven van fictie is dat u van de tirannie van feiten wordt bevrijd, van het moeten alles juist krijgen, van sourcing alles die van belang is. Uw verbeelding wordt vrijgegeven. Maar u weet het,“ hij voegt toe, beginnend te lachen, „er is een weinig conflict dat hier gaat en ik ben niet zeker dat het een goed idee.“ is Na vijf decennia als kruisvaarder voor waarheid, die gemakkelijk komt het materiaal omhoog niet, maakt ondanks wat sommige van zijn rechtse critici zouden kunnen eisen. „Het is een echte strijd. Ik word constant getrokken terug naar non-fictie omdat het zo interessanter en levendig is,“ hij zeg. If the book does get finished, don’t expect to find Pilger wrestling with his emotions – “I’m not interested in navel gazing” – but developing characters he has observed on a journey that has taken him to war zones in Vietnam, East Timor, Palestine and beyond, always examining the roles of western governments in the conflicts. More than anything now, he wants to conduct a sit-down televised interview with Tony Blair, if only he can persuade the former prime minister to go on camera. “ITV would take that – Blair is somebody I don’t believe has ever been interviewed properly,” he says. “I’ve approached the people you are meant to approach and the silence is ear-splitting. No surprise there.” Later this month sees the release of a 16-disc DVD box-set of Pilger’s work, spanning 37 years of film-making and 52 documentaries. Though the documentary films were made for ITV, it is a series made for Channel 4 in 1983 he draws attention to. The Outsiders was a series of conversations between Pilger and maverick individuals he admired, many of them journalistic heroes such as Wilfred Burchett of the Daily Express, whom he reveres for having landed “the scoop of the century” in exposing the effects of the atomic attack on Hiroshima. “I have his wonderful front page,” he says, leading the way up to his office via a staircase decorated with framed photographs of his journalistic adventures, family and friends. And there it is, Wilfred Burchett’s scoop from 5 September 1945 with the headline “The Atomic Plague”, the intro, “I write this as a warning to the world…” and the byline “by Peter Burchett”. “The sub got his name wrong. Wilfred forgave him,” observes Pilger. “The entire press corps of Japan were embedded and on the day he set out on this perilous journey to Hiroshima, Japan had just been defeated and foreign journalists were being shepherded to see General MacArthur receive a ritualistic sword of defeat. Burchett said, ‘To hell with that, that’s not the real story,’ and headed the other way.” Burchett was demonised for his revelation that deaths at Hiroshima were caused by more than a bomb blast. The New York Times ran a “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima” piece and Burchett was branded a crazy leftie. The treatment echoes that meted out to Pilger following his 1970 film The Quiet Mutiny, which revealed rebellion in US military ranks during the Vietnam War. That documentary, stemming from articles Pilger had produced for Hugh Cudlipp’s Daily Mirror, was denounced by the American government, which complained to the broadcasting authorities. “I had no experience of anything like this, everything seemed to fall down around my shoulders and it was disturbing. But the story that film told became the received wisdom all over the world within a year.” To some in the modern media, Pilger is a figure from a bygone age, his name eliciting the sort of sighs of exasperation that until recently accompanied the notion of nationalisation. But he is convinced that there remains an appetite for left-wing journalism. “The influence of The Independent and Guardian are much greater than you would think. I don’t believe the majority of people in Britain have the so-called values of The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail and certainly not The Sun.” In the morning, he logs on to the Information Clearing House, a US-based website that provides a digest of left-of-centre journalism, highlighting the work of Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk and Pilger himself. Such sites ensure a large readership. “The internet has changed so much. In America alone, my New Statesman column reaches millions on the web.” He returned briefly to the Mirror after the September 11 terrorist attacks, when Piers Morgan (who he appears to respect) was editing the paper. “It was a very rewarding 18 months,” he says. “I was happy to keep on writing for the Mirror, but Piers was under pressure from the management and American shareholders who objected to the kind of journalism that he was publishing, often written by me. It was a myth that the readers didn’t want a serious approach to journalism in a popular newspaper.” When he speaks to journalism students, he is convinced “many start with the same passion I started with” and implores them to “keep your principles as you navigate the system”. His watchword remains, ‘Never believe anything until it’s officially denied,’ a favourite expression of reporter Claud Cockburn, father of Independent journalist Patrick Cockburn. Pilger hopes that his last documentary, The War on Democracy, and his forthcoming one, will encourage colleagues to take a more critical view. “If journalists can look behind the press-release version of events, or push back the screen of what is often propaganda but rarely recognised as such,” he says, “then we will produce true journalism, not a form of PR. We ought to be the agents of people, not power.” Have Your Say: Pilger’s law: ‘If it’s been officially denied, then it’s probably true’ Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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