[Media-watch] Why the truth must be told - Independent/Pilger - 6/7/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=538383

Why the truth must be told
Broadcasters are cheating the public by denying them the chance to see
hard-hitting documentaries, argues John Pilger
06 July 2004


Britain remains one of the few countries where documentaries are still shown
on mainstream television in the hours when most people are awake. But
documentaries that go against the received wisdom and inform are becoming an
endangered species, at the very time we need them most. That will be a
tragedy; for viewers in this country are not only used to but supportive of
an eclectic range of programmes, unlike in the US, where people expect
television to be little more than a shopping mall with buskers. Rupert
Murdoch's Fox Channel, a parody of journalism, fits this perfectly; and he
wants us to have the same.

In survey after survey, when people are asked what they would like more of
on television, they say documentaries. I don't believe they mean cod-
documentaries about airports and estate agents. Nor do they mean a type of
"current affairs'' that is a platform for politicians and establishment
"experts'' and merely gestures at the truth, striking a specious balance
between great power and its victims, between oppressors and the oppressed.
They mean what James Cameron called "truth-telling journalism captured on
film'': documentaries that are the antithesis of news; that strip away the
facades of "official truth'' and rescue unpalatable facts and historical
context from the memory hole to which "impartial'' news has consigned them.

The Indian writer Vandana Shiva had this in mind when she described, "the
insurrection of subjugated knowledge'' against the "dominant knowledge'' of
rapacious power. Had it not been for Death on the Rock and John Ware's A
Licence to Murder, many of us would not have known the secret criminal role
of the British state in the war in Northern Ireland.

The opponents of this kind of truly independent television journalism have
never been better organised or more vocal. My last two documentaries for
ITV, Breaking the Silence and Palestine is Still the Issue, were subjected
to orchestrated, political, often vicious campaigns of complaint,
originating mainly in the US, where neither film was shown. The Independent
Television Commission investigated nevertheless, and my producer and I had
to explain and justify almost every sequence, fact and source. The process
took six months, at the end of which the ITC concluded that both films were
balanced, fair and accurate. The Palestine film was praised for "the
thoroughness of its research and its integrity''.

The would-be censors are not only the frenetic e-mailers of the American
Zionist groups, but also those liberal Establishment journalists in this
country campaigning to rescue a discredited Prime Minister. These tribunes
have been in print lately bemoaning the media's influence over "politics''
(they mean Blair's lies over Iraq) and demanding that journalists return to
"basic values'' (self-censorship). Ron Nail's report for the BBC, a reaction
to the Hutton whitewash, is part of this; BBC journalists who offend the
Government had better watch out.

The looking-glass aspect of all this is that the great majority of the
British media, especially the BBC, dutifully channelled and echoed the
Government's pre-invasion lies, instead of challenging and exposing them as
journalists in a real democracy should do. According to Charles Lewis, the
former star American television journalist who now runs the Center for
Public Integrity, an independent investigative unit in Washington, Iraq
would not have been attacked had US journalists done their job and alerted
the public to the fakery of Bush and Blair.

Can that be said of British journalism? Not quite. The Independent and the
Daily Mirror broke ranks and, now and then, The Guardian. However, of all
the world's major broadcasters, according to a Media Tenor study, the BBC
gave the least coverage to anti-war dissent, less than even the US networks.
In other words, the views of the majority of Britons were ignored. All that
stuff about impartiality is, of course, stuff. The BBC, in its language,
emphasis and omissions, has supported every war in memory. Post-Hutton, even
its honourable exceptions are silent.

As I see it, only documentaries can make sense of the impositions of rampant
power that now touch all our lives. And yet within the industry there is a
resistance to documentaries that has a familiar echo: "They don't rate''. As
Channel 4 has found, they have often rated better than certain game shows
and "reality'' programmes. But that is not the point. Documentaries do rate
in a way that cries out for recognition. Death of a Nation: the Timor
Conspiracy, which I made in 1994 with David Munro, was followed by phone
calls from the public at the rate of 4,000 calls a minute according to BT,
and this continued well after midnight. When an updated version was shown
four years later, more than 150,000 calls were registered within 25 seconds
of the credits. This grew to half a million within the hour. And this was a
film about a tiny country few knew existed.

My point is that the quality of the public's response to powerful
documentaries is at least as important a measure of popularity, of public
interest, as the ratings. This does not mean that documentary makers can
rest their case on the worthiness of "public service broadcasting''. Viewers
nowadays are not prepared to accept a paternalistic notion that harks back
to Lord Reith, the BBC's founder and author of inspired forms of
establishment propaganda. That endures, alongside a corporatism exemplified
by the values of Murdoch, which Blair promised to uphold long before he came
to power. In recently announcing "less intrusion'', the Government's new
regulator, Ofcom, is making good on that promise.

Viewers deserve better; and true documentary makers, indeed all
broadcasters, have a special responsibility to fight their corner as never
before.

The ITV News Channel will begin a season of weekly John Pilger documentaries
on Sunday at 9pm. John Pilger's new book, 'Tell Me No Lies: Investigative
journalism and its triumphs' will be published by Jonathan Cape in the
autumn