It may look a little dated at times, but John Pilger’s 2010 documentary, The War You Don’t See, is a timeless indictment of the failure of modern journalism to hold power to account.
The film opens and closes with «Collateral Murder,» the infamous clip released by #Wikileaks in 2010 of two Iraqi Reuters journalists torn apart by heavy machine-gun fire from a US Apache gunship helicopter. Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh had been in #Baghdad on that day, July 12, 2007, covering the US invasion of #Iraq – which claimed to be designed to remove Iraqi dictator #Saddam Hussein# and the country’s «weapons of mass destruction.»
Nine other men died in the US attack. None of them was armed, and none were insurgents. Two senior US generals later told the Reuters bureau chief, Dean Yates, that the men were «military-aged males» acting suspiciously. They also claimed that AF47 rifles and other weapons were found at the scene.
It was all lies, and Julian Assange’s release of the helicopter’s camera footage of the incident (which included more fire on a minibus attempting to rescue wounded men, in which two children were badly wounded) three years later was a shocking indictment of the casual murder that the US claimed was «combat.»
«Weapons of mass destruction»
Incorporating footage and stories from the #Vietnam War#, Iraq and #Palestine, Pilger pins down senior television news managers (Fran Unsworth of the #BBC and David Mannion of #ITN, along with veteran American news anchor Dan Rather) and correspondents that include the BBC’s Ragegh Omaar and the Observer’s David Rose, along with foreign office officials involved in propagating then British PM’s so-called «dossier» on Saddam’s «weapons of mass destruction.»
The film explores in depth Pilger’s long assertion that war reporting in the late 20th and now early 21st century has become part of the propaganda of western #imperialism, dating back to his 1983 documentary Frontline: The Search for Truth in Wartime.
It has long been held that «truth is the first casualty of war», – but Pilger’s steady gaze explores the extent to which military and political #propaganda has co-opted journalism and reporters to its aim, particularly in the age of 24/7 rolling television news coverage, where the sheer pace of the news agenda, and incessant hunger for video footage to put on the air, creates enormous pressures and challenges for news executives.
The film explores in depth Pilger’s long assertion that war reporting in the late 20th and now early 21st century has become part of the propaganda of western imperialism
Mutual dependence
Those pressures too often translate into uncritical acceptance of government lies and relationships between war reporters and invading western forces that create a mutual dependence.
The practice of «embedding» reporters with frontline units – which began in the US forces during the 2003 attack on Iraq – has continued and been adopted by other armies.
Look at the coverage of the war in #Ukraine. One needs to be almost as careful talking about this conflict as one does in addressing the carnage caused over the years in Palestine by Israel.
The moral outrage exhibited in much of the west since Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine six months ago is based on genuine outrage at a war where the wronged party is clear to see.
But watch the evening news in any western country, and one often sees uncritical reporting by major western news organisations of the Ukrainian defence of their territory. Moreover, there is little effort given to question Kyiv’s claims of the 40,000+ Russians it claims to have killed or wounded; only recently was Ukraine’s own casualty figures updated from 3,000 military dead to 9,000. And that is almost certainly an underestimate, given the sheer scale of Russian artillery attacks.
Russian atrocities are well-documented; Moscow’s denials and laughably unprofessional fake footage aired on national television are easily dismissed. But the occasional surfacing of photos and stories referring to Ukrainian neglect of the #Geneva Conventions# – for example, unverified telephone video footage of the bodies of freshly killed Russian lined up beside an armoured personnel carrier, blood running from their bodies, as Ukrainian troops or militias boast of their execution.
Such footage often crops up on both Russian and Ukrainian #Telegram channels; sometimes networks such as #Al Jazeera# cover these incidents; the major western channels rarely, if ever.
While these incidents cannot be compared to the wholescale slaughter, rape, and torture of civilians documented in #Bucha and elsewhere, and the difficulty of investigating such incidents while working alongside Ukrainian forces cannot be underestimated, Pilger’s film does point to a steady weakening of critical assessments by many major news organisations.
The recent Amnesty International report criticising Ukrainian military forces for stationing troops in schools and other civilian buildings drew an angry response from #Kyiv, which accused the organisation of giving succour to Moscow’s propagandists. The fact that Russia had long insisted that its attacks on such objects were because they were being used for military purposes seemed borne out.
Voices that argue against the way in which the UK, America and the #EU have rushed to arm the Ukrainians are also side-lined – dismissed as the marginal mutterings of nutters. But the degree to which the US is able to use Ukraine as a proxy battleground for drawing out the Russians, for testing their weaknesses is undeniable.
the degree to which the US is able to use Ukraine as a proxy battleground for drawing out the Russians, for testing their weaknesses is undeniable.
A continued warning
The War You Don’t See is not an argument for leaving Ukraine to be devoured by Russian aggression. But it does serve as a continuing warning, all these years later (at a time when predictions about the revenge the US would seek on Assange have been proven true), that truth is indeed the first casualty of war, and journalists have a duty to ask the «tough, digging and aggressive» questions that #Dan Rather# at one point in the films admits were never asked on the Americans in Iraq.
