John
I hope there are many more of your articles on OLO. There are many forms of censorship including overload of trivia so the 'real' gets buried and the famous Hollywood line 'Based on a true story.'
Over the years I have followed your work and researched the issues raised and come to the conclusion that whilst we are supposed to be 'free' in the West we are never told the truth.

Shock, Horror,

People like to see movies that reflect what they believe, gives them some escape from reality, and Hollywood panders to it.

Block busters are 90% fantasy. Reality comes in the form of documentaries that are watched by a handful of people.

If you want to get on the big screen tell people what they want to hear not what they need to hear.

Sadly, people don't actually mind murderous governments so long as it is theirs and there is a suitable back-story to justify it.
Hollywood is one thing, where was the media...any media that questioned the manufactured "reasons" for Iraq?
There were reporters on the ground in Iraq reporting exactly what was subsequently found and also reporting the US's motives, but these were largely suppressed (AlJazeera), or ignored (Ted Rall).
The fact is that the media was playing war games along with Blackwater, Haliburton and the other profiteers.
Thank God for the Internet, and one day we may even have the "democracy" that we supposedly invade others for.

Pilger's focus is on war and colonialism, but film-making has entrenched many other forms of power as well. For example, the Hollywood Code of the 1930s is well-known for its harsh sexual morality. Much lesser known are the restrictions it put on the portrayal of such social issues as the poor and the rights of women.

The poor were not allowed to be shown to challenge the reasons for their poverty - instead, they had to either be shown as being happy with their lot or overcoming their poverty through the attainment of wealth. None of that commie stuff about the rich exploiting them. Some filmmakers, like Elia Kazan, occasionally got away with it, but only in return for dobbing in his commie friends to the HUAA.

Ditto, women. If a woman was shown to have an active sex-life, the Code's script guidelines required her to be 'punished' in some way - e.g. by losing the man she loved to a virginal rival or by dying some awful death - or she had to be portrayed as a whore or equivalent. Strong female characters were allowed, even encouraged, but female independence was a no-no.

By the 1960s, the Code was ditched, but its legacy lingers in Hollywood to this day.

For those interested, the Graham & Alford article,
"The power behind the screen" is available at
http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2009/01/disney-hollywood-interests

and a similar story by the same authors,
"The Deep Politics of Hollywood - In the Parents' Best Interest" can be found at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12465

Dear John, I can’t believe that I’m reading an article from a member of the media industry complaining about censorship. Are you serious?

What’s even funnier is that you seem surprised! considering your entire industry is built upon censorship, one voice trying to have its voice heard over that of others, by any means possible.

It’s rather like a manufacturer complaining that nobody is buying their product and then blaming the customer.

You have positioned your “product” in the marketplace and must accept that the market is rejecting it. Once you have accepted that fact you can do some basic analysis to determine why?

Your product is “opinion” on a wide range of global injustice causes for the underdog, passionately presented with biased, prejudicial, and selective research. A bit like Michael Moore, unfortunately he has turned “vigilante”. Which I might add it a natural progression for those who feel they are not being taken notice of.

Your product is positioned well left of centre and for many, such voices are disproportionately represented. So much so that your remaining outlets are facing sever criticism for promoting products like yours. The BBC, ABC and SBS are classic examples.

You have failed to recognize that your market can “educate” itself more today than ever before and is capable of forming its own opinion. Therefore your target audience is shrinking because fewer are buying your product.

Your product will always be bought by those who have an irrational “pet hatred” of big companies, globalisation, capitalism, imperialism and any social injustice that can be whipped up into an emotive hissy fit.

Your industry itself has long moved from news, current affairs and entertainment, to that of “opinion junkies” who seek to influence the masses. This is precisely what you complain about from your targeted “pet hatreds”.

Your pet hatreds are “Your Competitors”.

Many today are concerned that the Fourth Estate is no longer benign and is not only capable of, but actually does influence outcomes. That is definitely not good.

Believability Survey, the Australian, 2007. Politicians came 17th, Media 27th. I rest my case.

Here's a great clip from Ricky Gervais' 'Extras' with a chillingly prophetic 'Holocaust Oscar' script written for Kate Winslet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEnjiGwVw6o

(Note: If at all interested, don't delay, as a number of internet references and related copies have already been pulled.)

Sir Vivor

Great link. Thanks.

spindoc

‘[John's] product is positioned well left of centre and for many, such voices are disproportionately represented… The BBC, ABC and SBS are classic examples.’

Sigh!

The BBC, ABC and SBS are ‘classic’ misrepresentations of so-called left-of-centre bias. In reality, they are not even within coo-ee of the left.

All of them have, at best, dutifully reported and, at worst, unashamedly promoted the US-led Coalition of the Willing, the so-called ‘war on terror’, Israel’s ‘right’ to use grotesquely disproportionate force against the Palestinian nationalist struggle, and now the Obama administration’s military escalation into Afghanistan. They also dutifully report the bail-out of our corrupt captains of industry, with little to no opposing viewpoint.

If they were as left-wing as their right-wing detractors insist with so much such shrill repetition, then they would be openly and aggressively opposing these stances – in the way that, say, Fox News openly and aggressively supports them.

At best, the BBC, ABC and SBS are safely centrist, both in their coverage and in their selection of news outlets. For many, however, the centre is still too far away from the suffocating clutches of the far right.

Don’t you just love perspectives SJF? I suggested to John Pilger, that “Your product is positioned well left of centre and for many, such voices are disproportionately represented.” The “for many” to whom I refer, obviously does not include you SJF.

As I said it’s all down to perspective. If I’m a centrist, all things are in balance and the relative merits of both left and right can be observed. If I’m on the “right”, all things are left of my centre. This brings us to how you see things, if your perspective is that even the BBC, ABC and SBA (the Three Amigo’s) are to your right where does that leave you?

I think the Three Amigo’s produce some of the best programming available, sadly that does not include news and current affairs, at which they are (my perspective) absolutely woeful.

During 2008, the ABC was formally taken to task over 21 instances of prejudicial “left bias”, 19 were upheld. There was not one single instance of the ABC being challenged for “right bias”. I ask again, where does that leave you? My comment to John Pilger stands, for many his product is well left of centre. That leaves you as a member of his dwindling audience, perhaps?

Many of us get suckered into the belief that journalists have an altruistic purpose in life, sadly, even those same journalists often believe this. Truth is they are in business to make money. John Pilger complains he can’t get an audience; therefore he can’t get volume production of his product, CD’s, Free to Air Time and Network Production.

In reading your response SJF, John Pilger will be devastated. He’s in enough trouble with his product, yet for you, his remaining “access to market” vehicle, the Three Amigo’s, are too far right to get a hearing. He will be “gutted” to hear that.

John Pilger's book "Heroes", in my opinion marks him for life as a very genuine person, concerned about how other people live.

Reading Noam Chomsky's "Understanding Power", I came across a question from one of the people he converses with in the transcribed conversations of that very interesting book. He is asked who his heroes are, and he names no-one. He leaves them as unsung heroes, many of them members of SNCC in the early '60's making clear his high opinion of their courage. But he is a linguist, not a biographer, and his words are more those of an activist first and a humanist afterward.

Both Chomsky and Pilger are recognised and reviled by the "right of centre", and many in the centre and some who view themselves as "left of centre".

Chomsky's enduring argument is that good, liberal journos mostly have their conflicting views compartmentalised so that they can comment reasonably on injustice, within the framework set by their employer, who need not worry that they might go beyond the pale.

The tame nature of comments about the destruction of Gaza are an example. Over 10,000 homes were destroyed in the recent Israeli attacks, but little notice has been taken, beyond some handwringing after the attacks, which were premeditated for 6 months, along with the attendant publicity campaign.

Perhaps we would have been more concerned if Gaza had been destroyed in a major earthquake, but that perhaps remains untested. I wonder how many readers here sincerely believe that concrete and pipes, etc should not be supplied, to rebuild Gaza, until Hamas promises to cease all rocket attacks?

The image pops up of a billboard on Sydney's Parramatta Road, in the early '80's, I believe. Some TV station's news team, tidy, photogenic. The sign was graffiti'd "three blind mice".

Pilger says >> "The partisans who tunnel out of their prison in Gaza, bringing in food, clothes, medicines and weapons with which to defend themselves, are no less heroic than the celluloid-honoured POWs and partisans of the 1940s. They and the rest of us deserve the respect of the greatest popular medium."

Yes we all know that someone's terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. But anyone pretending that Hamas are freedom fighters is SO COMPLETELY IRREDEEMABLE that their opinion on any subject must be called into question.

Paul L; without wishing to cast any aspersions whatever, I suggest whether the Maquis was viewed in a similar light by the Petain government of WWII France.

The role of the French resistance forces in WWII was propagandised by Hollywood in the film Casablanca. The Wikipedia entry is interesting in the context of John Pilger's article and the discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_(film)
"The film was a solid, if unspectacular, success in its initial run, rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier.[2]

spindoc

‘If I’m on the “right”, all things are left of my centre.’

Which is why the ABC campaign of ‘left-wing’ bias evolved as it did. It’s also why those 19 instances of ‘prejudicial’ bias were a joke. How did they measure the bias … mathematically?

‘‘In reading your response SJF, John Pilger will be devastated. He’s in enough trouble with his product …’

What trouble? Selling it or defending it? He’s having no trouble at all with either. In fact, his ‘product’ is highly sought after worldwide. The reason he is not a household name in his native country is because its far-right establishment (even the ABC) has made him a semi-pariah.

Sir Vivor

Re Casablanca … Can’t you just see Hamas proclaiming...?

‘Of all the armies in all the refugee enclaves in all the world, they had to come into mine.’

Or how about Zippy and Binyamin leaning over the piano …

‘Bomb it again, Benny. Just once more for old times sake.’

The censorship in the media is often as subtle as money. Publishers have 'formula' books. They are the books that sell. Why do they sell? Because Formula books are the only books published by mainstream publishers. It is a case of take it or leave it.
There is even a formula for 'controversial' books that fit into a very narrow range of allowed content.

It is extremely unlikely that anyone reading these posts have experienced ideas outside of the very narrow range allowed by the thought police.
That is beginning to change with the internet but it will take generation before the narrow blind dogmatic views installed into pre-internet die out. And even that is doubtful because the internet now uses site such as 'Face book' to control the thinking of the new generations.

There is much riding on keeping a population within a very limited thinking regime. If people thought for themselves advertising it sell the latest fad would be dead. Politicians could not survive without telling the truth. Society as we know it would collapse.
This 'left' and 'right' thing is just another way of keeping people within limits. You can look at John Pilger's work and label him 'far left' and that way you do not have look at what he has to say because he has been given a label that is outside your approved thinking. Basically John is at the limits of what the thought police will let him get away with but is still very close to centre for the truths you do not know about, or will ever be allowed to hear.

There is a quote 'It is lucky for governments that the people do not think.' That came for Adolf Hitler and has recently been proved to be true yet again by George Bush. Dictators left and right know the secret of keeping the people under control. In recent years it has become more subtle but is as strong as it ever was. If Hitler had learnt to be a little subtle the Third Reich would still be with us.

'Vicious colonial wars and political, economic and environmental corruption cry out for a place on the big screen. Yet, try to name one recent film that has dealt with these, honestly and powerfully, let alone satirically.'

A Hollywood film? Perhaps not. Although Thankyou for Somking was a funny film. It could be about censorship, but also could be about what people want to watch. Inevitably someone has to make the decision (usually the one putting up all that money) to make these films. Hollywood's run by Jews isn't it;-)

Daviy,

Such conspiracy theories. I think people rather tend to subconciously re-inforce what they 'know' to be true. It's part of creating a consistant world view. That's why you probably wont find someone like SJF reading Henderson or Bolt (unless to enjoy hating them, I know I like to read Miranda Divine to get myself all worked up). Aparently her tastes are even too far left for the ABC, so pehaps she consoles herself in the feminist discussion groups she attends.

Point is, people self-censor, then by natural variation of opinion, dictate the marketability of different world views.

I went through a 'stage' of reading Chomsky and Pilger. There's some intersting food for thought but then it gets all a bit same old same old. Kind of lends to my theory that these guys themselves are too focussed on collecting evidence for their fairly narrow, minority world view.

BTW: I don't think any world view is more valid than another. And I think it's pretty conceited to think if only the world could open their eyes and think like you. As Jim Morrison once said, ' you're all a bunch of focking slaves!'. If some in the audience are offended by that opinion, leading to less sales, well, it's not really censorship now is it.

Daviy

'Because Formula books are the only books published by mainstream publishers. It is a case of take it or leave it.'

Having worked in publishing for many years, I'd say that's about right. The reading public remains blissfully unaware of how most publishing decisions are made. People have a tendency to think that authors write manuscripts, submit them for publication, and then the editors decide whether or not the book will sell.

This process does happen but it's rare - especially for non-fiction. Routinely speaking, publishers decide on future publishing projects at least a year or two in advance and then commission authors to write the manuscripts. Even then, the authors often get a set of guidelines and regular updated reviews and appraisals on what the publisher wants written. Although I haven't worked in the film industry or media, from what I gather from those who do, a similar process occurs there too.

Houellebecq

Either you and I live in totally separate universes or there are two different journalists in Australia going by the name of Miranda Devine.

The Miranda Devine I know belongs to that triumvirate of unashamedly right-wing feminism-slaggers - along with Janet Albrechtson and Angela Shanahan - that forged their careers from the frontlines of the Howard era culture wars.

If there is another feminist journalist somewhere called Miranda Devine (Divine?), she is welcome to join my feminist discussion group. However, if that other previously mentioned journalist called Miranda Devine even THINKS about doing so, I’ll burn my ‘Don’t call me Girlie’ badge

SJF,

I think everyone does live in a different universe to everyone else. But I think you have misread my post, or made some assumptions about my politics.

'The Miranda Devine I know belongs to that triumvirate of unashamedly right-wing feminism-slaggers...'

Yes she does, which is why I cant stand her. But I am compelled to read what she says so I can enjoy hating her. I also have a theory that she is there primarily to wind up lefty Herald readers so they can race to have a winge on the letters page.

I also read Piers for a laugh.

So why did you think I would like Miranda? Or why did you think I was saying you would like Miranda, I was implying the opposite. Or did you think I was so right wing, and hating Miranda, so we must live in different worlds?

Houellebecq.
Do you ever get tired of saying 'Conspiracy theory' every time there is something said you do not like? I don't enjoy hating anyone. It is a total waste of time. I have an opinion (one of many) that it is impossible to oppose anything unless you know what you are opposing. Hence read anything from any source and if it is deemed necessary to form an opinion about anything there is at least a chance that it might be an informed opinion.

Making judgments about another motives or what they would read is something you just cannot do. If a person is 'always left' or 'always right' then they are nothing more than a robot.

Everybody has a minority view. No matter what we do we are in a minority. Most Politicians win there seats with a minority. More people voted against most politicians than for them, but they still won their seats with the largest minority, plus a little shuffling of preferences to give the impression of a majority. So John Pilger's view is a minority view. So what? So is yours and mine.

My original point. Left and right are only names that give the limits of allowable thought. They mean nothing and the use of them in a debate such as this means nothing. The debate is about if censorship exists in films? If it does then John Pilger is correct no matter how many disparaging 'lefty' remarks you make.

Daviy,

When someone talks about 'thought police' then a conspiracy theory is self evident. ‘Big Brother' trying to 'control the populace'? I think Huxley was more on the money than Orwell.

'uses site such as 'Face book' to control the thinking of the new generations'
What is their end goal? World domination? Is the CIA involved? Facebook have a marketing tool they haven't worked out how to make the maximum money out of yet. Why, because people are fickle. If they piss anyone off with ads or sell their info, the next MySpace type invention will take all their customer profiles. They tried innocently to change the terms and conditions recently and were quickly pulled into line by conspiracy theorists using Facebook itself to advertise their cause.

'It is lucky for governments that the people do not think….proved to be true yet again by George Bush. '

So basically you're saying because Bush got elected, people do not think. I'm sure there are many right wingers who think because Rudd got elected, people do not think. What an arrogant way to see the world.

'Making judgments about another motives or what they would read is something you just cannot do.'
Yeah you can. I just did. There are a hell of a lot of ABC watching Herald readers or ACA watching Telegraph readers out there. Some like to hear about all those dole bludgers and how they should be locked up, the other like to hear about all those poor disadvantaged people who need more help from the heartless government.

PS: Why does everyone think I'm disparaging lefties? I brought up 3 right wing commentators and put them up to ridicule.

PPS: I find it fun to hate people; Wally Lewis, Bette Midler, John Howard, Mike Munroe, Peter Costello, Miranda, Steve Waugh, Harbhajan Singh, Sunil Gavaskar. The joy I've got from those people over the years I cant tell you.

Hooleybeck

If I misread your post, it might have had something to do with this statement:

‘Aparently [Miranda Devine’s] tastes are even too far left for the ABC, so pehaps she consoles herself in the feminist discussion groups she attends.’

This wording reads as if you were claiming MD as both a left-winger and a feminist. I have seen both these one-size-fits-all labels used to refer to her in the past. However, I accept that I stand corrected.

Also, just reading your comments to Daviy … your worldview reminds me of a giant warehouse full of people in cages throwing eggs at people in other cages. I’ll keep that in mind when you disparage lefties or righties in the future.

SJF

<your worldview reminds me of a giant warehouse full of people in cages throwing eggs at people in other cages. I’ll keep that in mind when you disparage lefties or righties in the future.>

I think you are beginning to get the idea. We have the Jews in their cage kicking shite out of Gaza. We have Hamas in their cage throwing rockets at the Jews. We have the Shiites in their cage blowing up Sunnis who are retaliating from there little cage, mostly bought on by Bush/Blair/Howard from their little cage bombing hell out of Iraq because Saddam Husain was supposed to have a cage full of WMD's.
What over cages have we? There is Taliban cage, the Faq cage, the tamil Tiger cage, the Burmese generals cage and sundry other little cages scattered around the place.
All this is supported by non-thinking people screaming 'left/right' and sundry other labels. And at the same time we have Houellebecq in the background listing the people he/she enjoys hating.

These cages are self constructed prisons built by believing what the cage masters (left and Right)want you to believe. None of these cages could be supported by a thing entity.
Back to the original article. These little cages only exist because of censorship in all its forms. I saw a quote, I think it was by the drummer of the cure whose name I have forgotten. 'Public opinion is orchestrated ignorance.' That is spot on. So the people in their cage of orchestrated ignorance throw eggs at others in another cage who are wallowing in their state of orchestrated ignorance. And so on and on it goes.

None of it has anything remotely resembling thinking attached to it