John Pilger discusses with Ramona Koval on ABC "Books and Writing" Sunday 5 December 2004 – "What constitutes good investigative journalism?" – a website commentary by Tony Kevin

This latest program on Ramona Koval’s "Books and Writing" is well worth hearing on ABC National audio file – a half-hour interview with John Pilger discussing what constitutes good investigative journalism, and how poorly we are being served in this field in Australia now.

As I listened to Pilger and Koval, I reflected on my own experience with writing my investigative book on SIEV X – certainly, "doggedness" was required to research and write it and seek a publisher brave enough to print it - and on how quietly the book has been received in Australia.

I also thought about the fate of my more recent forays into investigative journalism: e.g., exposing Australia’s underhand commencement of its war in Iraq on 18 March 2003 during a declared ultimatum period, while Australia’s war was initially claimed publicly by John Howard and the ADF to have started two days later on 20 March 2003.

And my recent efforts over the past month to relay to Australian media the evidence that the US military destruction of Fallujah in November 2004 is a major war crime of Nazi proportions (see the series of recent articles on this website) – work which was denounced by The Australian’s columnist Janet Albrechtsen as "grotesque", "morally offensive and intellectually bankrupt", "unconcerned with facts and blinded by political motivations" and "hysterical". (I guess this work must have touched a few raw nerves at The Australian).

Pilger and Koval address the issue of reporting the Iraq War in the final four minutes of their interview. He commends (as I do) the internet-accessible reporting from people who are there, reporting what this war is like on the Iraqi civilian side. He calls this a kind of "samizdat" reporting – "reporting you won’t read in The Age", he says. (Our own Donna Mulhearn is doing some of this now – but who is publishing her reports?)

Earlier in the interview, Pilger emphasises several times the need for investigative journalists to have major media editorial support if their work is to break through to the general public – no matter how good or important it might be. He cites Seymour Hersh’s classic work on exposing the US military war crimes at My Lai in Vietnam. He notes that Hersh’s writing on My Lai was around for some time but having no public impact at all, until it was finally picked up by a major media outlet.

Pilger says this shows how even important stories can lie buried in little obscure journals (or, he might have added, in little obscure websites like this one). So what is the answer? I am still looking for one.

Hear Pilger – it’s worth half an hour of your time. Go to

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/default.htm

and click onto the Audio link to this program. Or the hotlink below "listen to the program" might work for you.

The ABC Radio National website blurb on this program follows:

John Pilger

Sunday 5 December 2004

This week on Books & Writing ... what constitutes good investigative journalism? Ramona Koval talks to a man who triggers floods of vitriol every time he opens his mouth or puts pen to paper, and yet who commands respect around the world for his dogged forthrightness. John Pilger has just edited a collection of some of the most influential and courageous acts of journalism from the past century, titled Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism And Its Triumphs ... from Martha Gellhorne's eyewitness report of the liberation of Dachau concentration camp and Wilfrid Burchett's reporting of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, through to civilian accounts of the reality on the ground in Iraq as the recent war unfolded. This is journalism that works to the dictum

News is something someone somewhere doesn't want published - all the rest is advertising.

Listen to the program

Tony Kevin, Canberra 5 December 2004