John Pilger’s Hidden Agendas

We consume journalistic opinions on contemporary events almost without realizing it, or perhaps before. We wait for commenters to express their point of view, which we then absorb. We agree or disagree with it and then move on, often to the next so-called analysis. Of course, these points of view influence our thoughts, but we are critically aware and accept that not everyone thinks like us.

It is quite rare to find collections of such pieces, however, rarer still to assemble them long after the events they describe and rarer still to produce, as a result, a book worth reading from cover to cover. Hidden Agendas by John Pilger is one such book. And reading Hidden Agendas with the current label “fake news” in mind is enlightening and rewarding.

First published in 1998, Hidden Agendas collects pieces by its author on various topics, spanning several decades. There are pieces about the Cold War and, more importantly, about the East Timorese’s fight for independence, dating back to 1974 and the collapse of what was left of the Portuguese Empire. John Pilger also describes the relationships of his own country, Australia, with his own identity and its indigenous peoples. He travels to Burma to describe daily life and its poisoned politics and offers an analysis that from today’s perspective is nothing short of fascinating. He describes the dawn of the Blair era in the UK, with the New Labor leader declaring his intention to realize a Thatcherian dream. We pick up the miners’ strike of the mid-1980s, already seen from a distance of 15 years. He also refers to the Hillsborough tragedy in an article on Sun journalism and reminds us that in Merseyside the paper is still vilified today for its coverage of these events. Is it not ironic that a contemporary reader can now look back on this analysis of 20 years ago, knowing that for the Hillsborough victims an investigation has finally done justice, while for those vilified and jailed after Orgreave an investigation is still denied? ? It seems perverse that justice seems to need deaths.

But by far the most interesting parts of Hidden Agendas are those dealing with the author’s autobiographical accounts of his work as a journalist. It begins in Australia, where the media was owned by cartels whose interests they heavily promoted. He moved to the UK, where something similar was evolving. The Daily Mirror’s depiction of John Pilger’s life is very engaging and impressive because there is a genuine feeling that the paper was interested in truth first and position second. He offers a convincing defense of the Mirror’s campaign style and then laments that by 1998 the paper had already become just another.

John Pilger’s often scathing criticisms of print media are, if anything, all the more poignant in today’s online jungle. At the very least, the media owners he describes largely declared themselves loyal to him, to such an extent that positions were often predictable. In the current miasma of the internet, where populism seems to rule and where the origins of opinion are often hard to pinpoint, it’s helpful for John Pilger to remind you that opinion presented as opinion can never be “fake news,” whatever it may be. to be. Opinion disguised as “fact” is simply a lie.

The political right has never been impressed with the work of John Pilger. But regardless of what one thinks about the content of his op-eds, Hidden Agendas illustrates that he doesn’t give up on causes. The long, hard and largely unnoticed battle in East Timor is a testament to his commitment to justice on behalf of those who were denied it. And, on issues like the Hillsborough tragedy, the mainstream media, at the time, may have even branded Pilger’s position as extreme, or even “fake news,” since it contradicted the fabricated story that the mainstream media communication sold. Reading these opinion pieces by John Pilger, one is confronted with the contemporary reality that “fake news” is probably an opinion that someone doesn’t like, an opinion that is more easily dismissed with a label than a counter-argument. Hidden Agendas also remember that the only important opinions are the ones that are proven to be correct.