The War You Don't See

The War you Don't see is a British documentary produced and directed by Australian journalist John Pilger that focus on the dangers of embedded journalism in war times. If journalists do not do their job, we are misinformed and more easily manipulated, we don't see the suffering of innocent civilians and, therefore, we don't oppose the involvement of our governments and Army in those conflicts. The documentary presents many cases in History to proof the point, specially focusing on the Iraq War but showing examples that go from the support of Cigarettes in the media in the 1920s, to the Vietnam War to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, to Wikileaks. It is not as much a critic to those who start and carry out unjust wars, but a warning call to the Journalists, who should be doing their job properly, asking the right questions, investigating things when needed, so we know the truth and act upon it. I loved the documentary. I thought that the Libyan war is showing more of the same, another oil war masqueraded as a free the people war. Pilger makes the right questions, upfront, and does not allow his interviewees to bullshit the public. Pilger is not complacent with his colleagues, not even with the heavy weights of journalism. He does what he asks them to do, and that makes the documentary honest, thrilling, entertaining and informative. However, to be honest, we knew already much of what it is said in it. In fact, there were thousands of people demonstrating against the Iraq War in Australia (and the USA, UK, and the rest of the Western World) calling the arms of mass destruction "arms of mass distraction" despite those embedded journalists believing USA-UK's lies and contributing to their spread. People are sometimes wiser that one could think. The problem is that, once the war starts, and civilians are slaughtered every day, we need to know what we are fighting for. Pilger shows us the nitty-gritty of it, the details, the Monica Lewinski's sort of proof. On the other hand, we do not want to see deceased chopped bodies in our news bulletins in certain countries (I'm just remembering the airbrushing of one of the iconic images of the Madrid Bombings showing severed limbs in most Australian media). I thought that not only the media is guilty of that, but we are guilty too, for not wanting to know the real human drama behind any war, especially if the deceased are not ours.

Too many people swallow the news (TV or newspapers) as if they were God's Gospel, without thinking that perhaps the channel they are watching is owned by a filthy rich disgusting guy who is not interested in the truth, but in controlling its spread, so his corporation or businesses do better. Lies make them richer. We have to be honest with ourselves. Lies in the news are easily spread because the level of education of the population is not high enough (in fact, money is more valued than education nowadays), and because independent thinking is not promoted in school, University, or anywhere. Quite the contrary. Everybody wants to be in tune with the social network in vogue. Everybody wants to belong to a flock. So, the problem is not just the sort of journalism we have nowadays, or that the news lie to us regularly, but also the sort of viewers we have nowadays - Viewers who don't question what they hear or see on the news when war is on, or when there isn't even a war. I missed a hint of this point in the documentary, which I consider very important. That would have been moving a step forward from the usual blaming of the Empire, as if our society wasn't to blame for letting others think for us, or swallow crap without any sort of resistance.

Said this, the documentary was great, as it proves that we are certainly being lied every day, intentionally or by default, in war times or not. We are told that we are fighting for the freedom of the people, but that is never the case.

A wish. I would like Pilger to focus on the crap of ours, the Australian one, and examine closely which sort of news are shown in our TV stations every day, or which sort of crappy newspapers we have in Australia regarding local issues. Why is so? Who are the responsible? What are the lies? Who are the liars?

Compulsory watching!

This is, I agree, compulsory viewing. This is the first documentary about the corruption of war by propaganda which serves to progress the argument beyond the usual hysteria. Pilger has, with this film, moved away from the slew of similar-themed documentaries which add little to the debate but more circular arguments. Instead, Pilger goes straight for admissions of guilt. He manages to get some truly frank disclosures of global conspiracy and madness from the most relevant people he could realistically get access to, and for this he deserves the praise.

It can be argued, and it will be no doubt, that there is very little material to act as a counterweight to his position in the film. But after you finish watching it, you will hopefully realise what a stupid criticism it is to make in the first place, considering what this documentary is designed to rally against.

I won't get into the moral position it presents, as that's up to you in the end, but I'd be hard pushed to find anybody not moved, repulsed or outraged by this film, or all of those things simultaneously. Just watch it. Do it now.

An amazingly brave documentary about the place of mass- media propaganda in war. If in communism mass media don't have anything to criticise because everything go well , in capitalism the first duty of mass media is to criticise the governements..There are very few journalist who does that. The dezinformation , the brain washing is the real flag of the mas media. The movie was made in 2010 and it refers at the wars in Iraq ,the war from Vietnam , from Afghanistan where american and british are the propagandists of lieying , and the war between Israel and Palestine. You realise if that movie were made in 2023 only from the intervention of Russia in Nazicraine when the manipulation and desinformation of western media.peaked the highest point. And now only Oliver Stone from the west show the truth.

There is an Islamic tenet:

"It's enough for a person to be considered a liar if he narrates everything he hears."

These words were a cautionary statement to Muslims not to gossip or pass on every bit of unverified information they hear. I can see in this documentary that John Pilger is essentially saying the same thing to the various media personnel he interviewed that passed on the propaganda they'd gotten from American, Britain, and Israel.

"The War You Don't See" is about the propaganda version of war versus the the unedited, unfiltered version of war. John Pilger touches on several wars, but puts a lot of attention upon the Iraq War. Everyone now can claim that they always knew that Iraq had no WMD (weapons of mass destruction) nor were they connected to 9/11, but that certainly wasn't the prevalent belief in 2002. "The War You Don't See" shows just a tidbit of the war we didn't see in Iraq.

Again, John Pilger gets the blood boiling regarding the actions of the western powers like no one else can. I appreciate and loathe him for it. I appreciate knowing the atrocities that are being committed, but I hate being so angry and powerless. Still, I will watch whatever Pilger produces because it's always revelational and always important.

Embarrassed to have never heard of John Pilger before today, but I thought this was great, and am gladly going to seek out all his other documentaries that I can get my hands on.

You do have to get past the presentation, because while it's feature length (and content-wise much more informative than many movie length documentaries), it's not really presented in a particularly cinematic way. I didn't mind this once I adjusted to the style, because the arguments and interviews and statistics were more than compelling enough. I only mention it as one of the only potential negatives with the overall documentary (oh and a little unfair putting The Deer Hunter and The Green Berets in the same boat. The former probably can't be viewed as propaganda exactly, but the point about it honing in on the American perspective and framing them as the victims was eye-opening and honestly a good point).

I love how straightforward Pilger is, I love his interview style, and I love the fact that he does interview people on both sides. Overall he strikes me as an incredibly intelligent guy who can nonetheless break down complex issues and explain them in ways that are straightforward and easy to digest, even if you're not particularly knowledgeable about what he's covering.

It covers conflicts from years long past, but its central message about the media's potential to manipulate the presentation of war is still relevant, and unfortunately is likely to remain so indefinitely.