Hidden Agendas
John Pilger, Vintage, 1998
Review by Alan Nichols
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 61
Winter 1998

The worst thing about John Pilger's Hidden Agendas is that he is almost always right. The second worst thing is that he takes away all our heroes, even nelson Mandela, because they are flawed by the necessity of compromise in public life.

Pilger, who has never held public office, does not compromise and never will. And he is unforgiving of all compromisers. His righteous anger flows consistently from page one to 687 of this new paperback. It is quite tiring. He is angry about Australia's betrayal of East Timor. He is scathing about Tony Blair's New Labour. He ridicules Bill Clinton's economic imperialism over Vietnam. He is off-handed about Christian motives in the campaign against arms manufacturing and in leadership ("Blair and Murdoch are, after all, Christians").

But Pilger never explains, despite many autobiographical references, the source of his righteous anger. Is it simply truth which is his primary value and concealment of truth which so annoys him? Is it a bonding with the poor which makes him so infuriated about the greed of the rich? No, his background at Bondi Beach was not poor, nor is there evidence that he has worked alongside the poor.

Maybe there is a Christian motivation way back, which enabled him to perceive truth, virtue and the common good. I have no doubt that quality education at Sydney High School instilled some discernment about public virtue. But, apart from the rich, the famous and the revolutionaries he has interviewed, there is not the faintest personal reference to the influences on him as a journalist in contemporary London. Maybe he is a self-made man. The Independent newspaper in Britain calls him "a moral interpreter of world affairs in a cynical age". And so he is. But how did that moral position arise?

It is possible to be critical of the book in a negative sense: it appears to be a collection of newspaper articles and scripts of his investigative television documentaries; some sections are autobiographical in the "look at my family tree" sense; unnecessary histories appear of, for example, the Mirror group of newspapers in the UK and of the miners' strike; and there are strident emotional crusades for which no motive is advanced.

In some ways, this book is as annoying as is Pilger himself. He exaggerates, in particular, his own importance. He projects himself as the last great international investigative journalist ("When there is no longer anyone speaking out, who will be the last voice?"). Another exaggeration: 200,000 homeless in Sydney. The trouble with exaggeration is that when we hear the real facts-say, 20,000 homeless in Sydney on any night-it does not seem such a scandal any more.

In an effort to get beyond the jargon of everyday journalism, Pilger tries to be poetic, but it sometimes fails. "Cudlipp's high forehead, shock of hair, jutting jaw and hunched shoulders marked him as a pugnacious character which sometimes belied his true nature as a pioneer, even visionary". Or "their face masks of yellow paste made from tree bark gave them a surreal and alien quality, like small ghosts emerging from the jungle or exotic faces in a Victorian album".

But, gosh, in the end I'm an admirer of John Pilger, not one of his many detractors. After all, I went to school with him at Sydney High in the 1950s, and we schoolmates need to stick together.

Pilger has a healthy Australian-born cynicism about glib politicians, for which there is ample justification in the book. But he judges their actions more than their words, recognising politicians' need to play to their own crowds.

He paints a gloomy picture of the world's great democracies. Britain and Australia have become the most unequal societies on earth, despite the pledges of their Labor Parties to redistribute wealth downwards. Blair's hero is Margaret Thatcher. Australia is as class-based as Britain. Politics exists "to protect the opulent from the majority".

In all of this political analysis, I regret to admit that Pilger is right. Australia is becoming a nation of two nations-those in paid work with access to everything, and the rest who don't count any more. Although Hidden Agendas is clearly written for British audiences, Pilger is nevertheless right up to date with warnings about the racism and prejudice of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party in its 1998 setting. He draws here on the comments of historian Henry Reynolds: "What conservatives balk at is that they will have to deal with indigenous Australians for the first time in 200 years". Pilger on these issues has a clarity many local observers lack at the moment.

Perhaps distance-living in London-makes things clear for him. Maybe his sense of moral outrage has not been compromised by the self-censorship of so many in the media in Australia, who simply don't write what they know their proprietors won't like.

While his criticisms of politicians are sharp, they are nothing compared to the dereliction of public duty of which he accuses his colleagues in journalism. His chapter, "The Rise and Fall of Popular Journalism", is white hot. Can he have any friends left? Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he likes being hated.

"Welcome to the foundry of lies" should be the banner over the gates of Rupert Murdoch's news factory at Wapping outside London. He calls journalists in the public relations and lobbying business "guardians of the faith and clerics of the established order". Even the BBC is tainted-they only criticise vicious regimes until "Western interests" are directly threatened. Pilger cites censorship of documentaries on the excesses of Indonesian leadership, and distortion of news on Zaire when it was a tool of Western economic imperialism.

Only two TV news companies now control all international news footage, and the whole world's media have become homogenised by ownership cartels. The squeeze is on any independent film companies or journalists who report without fear or favour.

The credulity of journalists reporting on the Gulf War is well known. Pilger adds many other examples, his most scathing attacks being in connection with East Timor.

Some people think that once Cambodia was over (in the media sense), he was determined to make his reputation on Timor; in short, that he was obsessed with it. There may be some truth in that. But he interviewed Xanana; he entered Timor illegally at some personal risk; and it is true that Australia acted in an abominably cowardly way towards vulnerable people who, after all, risked their lives for us in the Second World War.

There is no mercy for Bob Hawke, Gareth Evans or John Howard. Pilger obviously expected more from Labor leaders. But there is a certain amount of relish in his denunciation of them: he expects the worst.

There is a worrying aspect to this. His view of politics is so jaundiced that, however noble a person like Nelson Mandela might be while in prison, he is immediately and irreparably flawed when in power. He scorns the "absolutions dispensed by Desmond Tutu" and the "deifying of Nelson Mandela" because the aspirations of township people have been ignored. Is this correct? Or is it that their aspirations have not yet been met? How can they after 30 years of oppression under apartheid?

In case you think I have been a bit tough on Pilger, remember that I knew him in the playground. In case you think I am a bit tough on the book, I thoroughly recommend it as an expose of international politics normally concealed. You will never see on commercial TV what John gives us in this book. But be ready to be annoyed as well.

Alan Nichols is vicar of St Mark's Anglican Church, Camberwell. He lived two years in Asia while working with refugees and has re-visited many times.