The truth about lies
Harbans Singh

Tell Me No Lies
Ed. John Pilger. Jonathan Cape, London. Pages 626. £12.50.

Disobedience may or may not be the original virtue, though Oscar Wilde claimed it was, but it has down the ages motivated individuals to pursue a path, the importance of which is revealed many years later. Among those endowed with this virtue are a select few who have opted to be journalists and whose second nature is to believe a thing only when it is officially denied.

Tell Me No Lies is a collection of journalistic reports that have not only withstood the test of time, but also have continued to be "true and intelligent mirror" to events. John Pilger, himself no less accomplished in the art of getting the facts and the meaning of events right, has put together a collection of 29 edited works of some of the most remarkable men and women in the media at a time when "collateral damage" and "embedded" journalists are being considered integral to conflict and journalism.

John Pilger’s effort is all the more timely and commendable as we have entered an era where increasingly it is being sought that the world be reduced to a unipolarism and where McCarthyism is not only revisiting us, but also many times more dangerous now. We need to be wary of it, as it is subtler in nature and has the force of the economic might of those who think that they alone have inherited the earth.

The book, indeed, is a saga of courageous men and women who dared to break rank to expose the sinister designs of the establishment. It also is the sordid story of the occasional supplication of the media, thereby, sometimes helping the establishment to unleash genocide, as in Timor and Rawanda, death, terror and the diminishing of the human values, as in occupied Palestine and spreading poverty, hunger, disease and death, as in Iraq. All the exposes selected for this collection are a tribute to the noblest struggles launched by their authors against "power and its grip on historical memory".

That they also succeeded in holding those in power to account is a reminder of journalism’s paramount role, as periodically there have been journalists who have rescued truth and objectivity from the cover of official lies.
History is no stranger to lies, but by choosing an event occurring during the Second World War, the editor of the book has signalled that his occupation is with the modern times. Placed besides Martha Gellhorn’s Dachau is another event that has changed the face of conflict forever. Wilfred Burchett’s The Atomic Plague (1945) brings out the evil that is inherent in those who wield the weapons of destruction. It also reveals the ruthless pursuit by General MacAurthur of his military objectives even if that meant that 25,000 words telling the world of the plague that had been dropped on the Japanese were to be blacked out.

The menace of McCarthyism, exposed by Edward R. Murrow in his talks, needs to be remembered by all those who cherish freedom of expression and the right to hold on to different beliefs and political philosophies, for many suspect that the threat of terrorism is being used to resurrect McCarthyism to undermine the liberal democratic traditions of mankind. The collection also contains chilling exposure of duplicity, indifference and murderous intent.

The Massacre at My Lai, Year Zero, The Timor Papers, Chechnya: A Dirty War and A People Betrayed fall in this genre. With Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Joy Gordon’s Cool War: Economic Sanctions as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, we have entered a new era where those pretending to be the knights in shining armour and fighting the dark forces of mankind need to equip themselves with information and knowledge hitherto the domain of only the academicians and the scientists. The hallmark of each one of the works is not only the chilling objectivity, but also the restraint and economy of words, which is in sharp contrast to the magnitude of the tragedy that unfolds before the reader.

John Pilger has also been unsparing in his criticism of those in the media who collaborated with and capitulated to the powers of the day causing a tragedy worse than what was unleashed by the dictators that they were supposed to be fighting. Perhaps he has rightly drawn the conclusion, "That the State lies routinely is not what the media courses teach. If they did... the cynicism that many young journalists believe ordains them as journalists would not be diverted at their readers, viewers and listeners but at those in false authority.’

A must read book for students of journalism and those engaged in the task of administering justice and providing scour to the suffering mankind. It brings out the threats, as also thinking of those who perpetrate misery on fellow human beings.

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