THIS WEEK the Barbican Centre in London is staging a John Pilger Film Festival. To one admirer, Pilger is “a lone campaigning voice in a rising tide of current affairs dross”. Even some commentators more wary of Pilger’s politics declare admiration for his impassioned film-making. Yet Pilger’s documentaries are full of falsehoods. They operate by misdirection, simultaneously denouncing one form of injustice while ignoring or denying others.
Pilger gained prominence in Indochina in the 1970s. According to one contemporary who knew him there, Pilger was a courageous polemicist rather than a reporter. He saw what he wished to see and ignored the rest. Pilger’s documentaries about Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge inspired humanitarian fundraising, yet failed to disclose that Communist Vietnam, having invaded Cambodia and