John Pilger: This Much I Know

Acclaimed journalist, John Pilger is scheduled to appear on this week's Gorilla Radio - Monday November 5th at 5:30pm pacific time. - ape

This Much I Know - John Pilger



Sunday 13 November 2005, The Observer

- If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I've seen, if they'd watched children fry to death from Napalm and bleed to death from a cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do.

- The story from Iraq on our television screens is rarely about the people our side kill, and that our side are the principal killers. Calling to account our governments, the source of so much state terrorism, ought to be a Western journalist's first responsibility.

- The great maverick reporters saw themselves as agents of people, not of authority. Journalism is a great privilege, in which the journalist is allowed into people's lives and trusted to go away and tell their stories.

- The scoop of the century was when the Australian Wilfred Burchett became the first reporter to reach Hiroshima after the atomic bombing, and discovered that the deadly after-effects of the bomb were due to radiation. The Daily Express carried his report on its front page, headlined: 'The Atomic Plague: I write this as a warning to the world.' The occupation authorities tried to discredit his story, but he was vindicated.

- Burchett is one of my favourite mavericks. On the return journey to Tokyo, armed with a .45 Colt pistol, he single-handedly liberated two PoW camps.

- My great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother came to Australia in chains. Francis McCarthy was convicted in Cork of uttering unlawful oaths, Mary McCarthy was transported at 17 for working as a prostitute in London, which was the same as being convicted of poverty. She was only spared hanging because she was, as they said in court, 'in child'. I'm proud of Francis and Mary because they survived - more than half the passengers on those five-month sea journeys didn't.

- It's quite fashionable to have a convict in the family now, which wasn't always true. Certain members of my mother's family had social pretensions, and had tried to cover up what people called 'The Stain'.

- I love swimming, I love surfing. I grew up on Bondi Beach. I was shocked to find when I arrived in England that the basic swimming stroke was something called breaststroke, which just confirmed my Antipodean prejudices about the English - breaststroke is a version of treading water.

- I really enjoyed the Ashes this summer. It was regarded as a national tragedy back in Australia. I was in Sydney when England won the rugby world cup, beating Australia, and I got a perverse enjoyment out of it. There is a sports jingoism in Australia I don't find attractive.

- I came to live in London in the Sixties, during the worst winter since the 18th century, and almost went back home again. I really loathe the cold and grey.

- When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience.

- I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win.

- When I first went to Vietnam I lived in a fog of fear and was always pleased to leave. But I realised that if you stop being frightened you convert your natural compassion to a cynicism - and then you're in trouble as a human being.

- Being tall invests you with an authority you have no right to - and you're not likely to be mugged. But in parts of southeast Asia, where if you stand out someone might shoot you, it's a huge disadvantage.

- Martha Gellhorn was a friend of many years. Her article on Dachau is the most precise, brilliant piece of journalism of its kind I've read. It's unsentimental, and it's full of black farce and irony.

- The impact of the human tragedies I've reported on is that, more often than not, I'll be angry. I want to know why is this child dying? These are not acts of God; they're results of respectable politicians' decisions.

- I'm grateful to my parents for not bringing me up to believe in a higher authority.