It’s a little strange interviewing a journalist of John Pilger’s experience. For the past forty years Pilger has been on the other side of the tape recorder, asking questions of the powerful and powerless in an exemplary career as a print and television reporter.
With assignments that include the Vietnam War, the military coup in Burma and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Pilger has chronicled many of the major political events of our time. An unstinting critic of Western governments, exposing their frequent misuse of power with tenacity rare in today’s rolling-news environment, Pilger continues in the old fashioned tradition of campaigning journalism.
When I meet Pilger to discuss his new film The War on Democracy, I wonder how he feels — as a jobbing journalist — being interviewed. “I’d rather be doing the interviewing,” he admits. “It’s OK, though,” he says in the steady, Australian accent he’s kept, despite leaving Sydney to settle in the UK in the early ’60s. “I’m happy to talk to The Big Issue.”
If that was a calculated bit of flattery to win over this publication’s approval for his new film, it’s unnecessary. A fine portrait of the popular movement for democracy that’s sweeping Latin America in the wake of the 1998 election of Venezuela president Hugo Chavez, the film looks at instances across the continent of poor people challenging the power of the ruling elite. Looking back at the bloody legacy of US meddling in Latin America, the documentary is fiercely critical of Washington’s relationship with its southern neighbours.
Its most moving stretch is a depiction of the successful resistance Bolivia’s indigenous population staged against the privation of the country’s natural resources by multinationals. Pilger talks with undisguised optimism about the Bolivian example. “It’s a momentous event,” he says of the campaign. “If you sit down somebody in a very poor place in Bolivia you can have some of the most sophisticated political discussions available, and often the person you’re having that discussion with has very little formal education.”
The first film Pilger has made directly for a theatrical release, The War on Democracy is the latest in a mini-boom of politically aware documentaries on general release. Praising Michael Moore, he credits the US filmmaker “for opening the door for documentary filmmakers”.
The flipside of this popularity for nonfiction film in cinemas is the squeeze on documentaries in the television schedules. Although pointedly loyal to ITV (with whom he has a long-standing relationship) Pilger is scathing about mainstream current affairs. “I find broadcast news now almost unwatchable,” he says. Describing BBC’s flagship 10 O’Clock News as “a mixture of violent sound bites and reality television”, Pilger adds that much of his information comes from the web.
“It’s about time journalists who are serious about journalism deconstructed their own craft. Once you enter the portals of the BBC, you’re supposed to rise to this nirvana of objectivity, which is nonsense. It’s simply another way of presenting a consensual point of view.”
I wonder if Pilger’s tough questions about the working methods that prevail in journalism lose him friends in the profession. “No. I have a lot of young journalists who are in touch with me all the time.” Then a pause. “Whether it loses me friends among famous journalists, I really don’t care,” he adds with a puckish chortle.
It’s gleeful bit of mischief making that hints at the needling attitude to authority that underpins his all his work. Where does this maverick streak come from? Pilger says he was “fortunate to grow up in a family where the underdog was considered always worthy of our support”.
And, at the risk of indulging in the kind of national stereotype you’d struggle to find in Pilger’s work, can he ascribe his bloody-minded streak to his Australian background?
“Yes. My great, great grandfather was convicted of uttering unlawful oaths, clapped in irons and sent to Australia,” he says. “I’m proud of that legacy.”
