Tell Me No Lies
Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs,
edited by John Pilger

At a time when journalism is under increasing attack, this celebration of the very best of investigative journalism, and some of the greatest practitioners of the craft, could not be more timely.

In selecting for this anthology articles, broadcasts and book extracts that have got behind the facade of official silence to reveal important and disturbing truths, John Pilger is paying his own professional tribute to some of the men and women he most admires. Here are the famous muckrakers (Seymour Hersh on the My Lai massacre; Paul Foot on the Lockerbie cover-up), as well as the courageous eyewitnesses (Wilfred Burchett, the first Westerner to enter Hiroshima following the atomic bombing; Israeli journalist Amira Hass, reporting from the Gaza Strip in the 1990s). Here, too, are the great mavericks (the German undercover reporter Gunter Wallraff; Jessica Mitford on 'The American Way of Death').

The book ranges from across many of the critical events, scandals and struggles of the past fifty years, from the scenes described by Martha Gellhorn at the liberation of the death camp at Dachau in 1945, to the bloodshed caused by the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Along the way it bears witness to epic injustices committed against the peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor and Palestine.

John Pilger sets each piece of reportage in its context, often offering personal insights into the writer. He introduces the collection with a passionate essay arguing that the kind of journalism he celebrates here is being subverted by the very forces that ought to be its target. Taken as a whole, the book tells an extraordinary 'secret history' of the modern era, through the stories filed by some of its finest journalists. It is also a call to arms to journalists everywhere - before it is too late.

John Pilger grew up in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, author and film-maker. He has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of Journalist of the Year, for his work all over the world, notably in Cambodia (of which an extract is included here) and Vietnam. Among a number of other awards, he has been International Reporter of the Year and winner of the United Nations Association Media Peace Prize. For his broadcasting he has won France's Reporter Sans Frontieres, an American television Academy Award, an Emmy, and the Richard Dimbleby Award, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In 2003 he received the Sophie Prize for thirty years of exposing deception and improving human rights. He lives in London.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 626
Size: 136 mm x 232 mm
Published: 2004

"Genuine objective journalism not only gets the facts right, it gets the meaning of events right. It is compelling not only today, but stands the test of time. It is validated not only by 'reliable sources', but by the unfolding of history. It is journalism that ten, twenty, fifty years after the fact still holds up a true and intelligent mirror to events."
T.D. Allman, journalist

"Never believe anything until it is officially denied."
Claude Cockburn, journalist