By Saffron Howden
In News of a Kidnapping, Colombian novelist and journalist Gabriel García Márquez described journalism as "fortunately, power without the throne". Such a view presents a myriad of problems, not the least of which is the influence that the so-called "mainstream" media have over the opinions of the public.
It is for precisely this reason that journalist John Pilger says he has spent most of his life "navigating to stay in the mainstream", offering "information", "analysis" and "disclosure" to "as wide an audience as possible".
While there has been a "consistent opposition from reactionary elements everywhere" to his work, he says he is not particularly bothered because it has also been his mainstream colleagues who have loaded him down with prizes over the years. What is more important is the number of people who buy his books and watch his television documentaries.
The success of his most recent book, Hidden Agendas, is evidence of his position as an influential and "established" voice in the media.
In this book, as in all his work, Pilger challenges widely held convictions of domestic and international politics. His focus in the book on Britain's New Labour government is to point out that the "idea of investing any hope in the Labor Party in this country [Australia] and in Britain is absurd".
He believes that it is important for everybody to "get rid of this lesser of two evilism politics" and to "acknowledge the tremendous likeness between all the mainstream parties".
He describes the current political climate in countries like Britain and Australia as "a period of disillusionment" and "education for a lot of people". While there is no solid opposition at the moment to the Labour Party in Britain because traditional voters are giving it the benefit of the doubt, Pilger believes that after a period of political consciousness-raising over the next 10 years, people will realise that Labour, in Australia as well, is "not their party any more" and will look at the alternatives.
Nonetheless, he believes that the perception in Britain that Labour and "the hated Conservatives" are distinguishable is "being broken down rapidly".
Similarly, he sees that the Labor and Liberal parties in Australia comprise a "seamless phenomenon", that the two "have a complementary role". Pilger believes that the Labor governments of Hawke and Keating laid the foundation — with the deregulation of the economy and floating of the currency — for the Coalition government of Howard to take the same agenda on to another level.
He cites the Native Title Act, brought in after the High Court Mabo ruling, as a case in point. He claims it was "set up to fail", and its flaws "have been not only articulated but implemented by the Howard government".
He also applied a scathing analysis of some of the leaders of the Australian Republican Movement, like Paul Keating, Malcolm Turnbull and Nick Greiner. The latter two, while proclaiming the need to be rid of the queen of England and the Union Jack, are helping to ensure that Australia remains "the second most foreign-owned country in the world, next to Canada".
He criticised the lack of "serious analysis of his [Keating's] republican campaign in the mainstream" and the fact that he was "implementing policy that would lead to a republic ... while, at the same time, surrendering Australia's economic sovereignty".
On issues such as this, Pilger believes, people are intuitively ahead of the media and part of a growing wave that, dissatisfied with mainstream politics, will look at the "alternatives".
He sees a similar shift occurring in South Africa after the 1999 election. He predicts that at this time there will be a "breakaway from the ANC [African National Congress] to the left".
He believes that because the ANC is the black Africans' liberation government, the people are giving it the "benefit of the doubt", but there is also a "great deal of disillusionment ... because the major promises have been broken". Whites and a small black elite have been the "main material beneficiaries of democracy".
The reasons for the ANC following this "very predictable path" of "swallowing the entire free market pill" and embracing economic rationalism, Pilger says, stem from the fact that the ANC was never "a revolutionary organisation, or even a radical organisation, or even a left-wing organisation", but always "a middle-class organisation". Consequently, it is implementing policies that will "ensure they create a small, visible consumer class".
This is not what South Africa wants and needs to overcome its "unique problems as a result of the long period of apartheid, where the majority are deeply impoverished" and "unemployment is increasing at the rate of 100,000 a year".
Pilger is more hopeful for Vietnam, citing the country's homogeneity, "the natural longing for a better material life" and the "quite profound understanding of the ... recent past".
Despite Vietnam being subjected to the abuses of the cheap-labour Nike economy, he believes that it has been "very cautious in the last few years" as it makes the transition to a freer market. It is also a hopeful sign that "the army has led the opposition to the more rapacious inroads of the free market economy".
Because Vietnam has had such an amazing history and "done things against the grain for most of this century", he has hope that it can retain some of its "basic socialism" and extraordinary achievements in health and education.
Speaking before President Suharto stepped down in Indonesia, Pilger also expressed guarded hope for East Timor's freedom. He said he didn't believe that a "revolutionary government, or ... even a particularly interesting reformist government" would assume power in Indonesia.
Nonetheless, he pointed out that the Indonesian military is under "considerable threat" in East Timor, claiming that "it's nothing they gain from" by retaining control there. He commented that Australia's policy of "hanging onto Suharto" has been one of "the most spectacular stupidity".
Pilger covers the issues of East Timor, Vietnam, Britain's Labour government and Australian politics extensively in Hidden Agendas. The book goes into particularly great depth on journalism and the international media system. Despite claims to the contrary, Pilger believes that he does offer alternatives by implication in all his work.
He is a socialist, but an independent one, who does not "usurp the basic journalistic work" that he does "with polemics" about socialism. Therefore, he does not describe himself as a political activist, but a journalist. And therein lies his power.