Journalism: The People's Witness

041852

HEJ 222/322

Journalism: The People’s Witness

Assignment 1

WILFRED BURCHETT

Australian author and journalist, Wilfred Burchett was born in Melbourne in

1911. As a child of the 1910’s, a child of the depression, Burchett’s boyhood was less than privileged. As written in Burchett’s Autobiography ‘At the Barricades’, ‘his boyhood was spent, for the most part, in rock -hard conditions, his family oscillating between economic disasters’ (At the barricades p.v). Self educated and radicalised by his experience of the depression, Burchett became one of the only Australian journalists to report the news from ‘the other side’. As stated by Harrison E. Salisbury, journalist from The New York times who wrote the introduction to Burchett’s Autobiography, ‘he (Burchett) believes in the underdog, whatever the continent, whatever the color, whatever the creed’ (At the Barricades p.viii).

Despite the fact that Burchett constantly maintained that he was simply fulfilling his role as an objective journalist, reporting from ‘the other side’ led Burchett to become ‘Australia’s most famous or infamous political son’ (the exile p.17).

Throughout his controversial career as an independent journalist, Burchett was present at and reported on almost all of the most significant conflicts of twentieth century. As stated in Burchett’s autobiography ‘There is hardly a war or revolution in the past forty years at which he as a journalist has not been present’ (at the barricades p.v). Burchett smuggled Jews out of Nazi Germany, was amidst the bloodshed and terror of the Vietnam War and of course made history with his scoops on the devastation of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

However, not all marveled at Burchett’s journalism. In fact, many people, especially those from his home country of Australia, ‘labelled him a traitor and paid agent of communist governments’ (The exile p.14).

The discontent that was felt towards Burchett by the conservative powers of the US and Australia was so extreme that in an unprecedented move, Burchett’s Australian passport was revoked, leaving him and his children living in exile for seventeen years. The Commonwealth repeatedly refused to renew Burchett’s passport that was lost in North Vietnam in 1955 on the grounds that ‘he was a communist and in 1961 decided that Burchett would not be admitted to the country. This decision was recognised as in conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and was almost certainly unconstitutional’ (). Finally when the Whitlam government came into power, Burchett’s passport was renewed, giving him to opportunity to once again live in his home country.

Upon arrival in Australia, Burchett was hardly given a warm welcome. A crowd of a few hundred gathered at Brisbane Airport yelling abuse and thrusting placards into the air that read “’Burchett Back to Hanoi’; ‘Burchett Traitor’; ‘Burchett Better Red and Dead’”(The exile p.16).

Once home Burchett launched a court case against a right-wing magazine, suing the magazine and its editor for defamation. The trial in 1974 is said to have ‘Developed into the most sensational and controversial court battle in Australian Legal history’ (The exile p.14)

Wilfred Burchett died of cancer in 1983, but long after his death public opinion still remains divided over Burchett’s controversial career. Despite some people’s belief about Burchett’s motives, his journalism had an extremely significant impact on the times in which he lived, and is still relevant today.

As previously mentioned, Burchett strongly sympathised with ...

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As previously mentioned, Burchett strongly sympathised with ‘The Underdog’, whether it be individuals, groups or nations. It is believed that Burchett personally helped to smuggle Jews out of the Nazi operated Germany. Whilst on tour in Germany in 1939, Burchett wrote numerous letters to Australian newspapers warning Australia of the Nazi’s and informing them about treatment of the Jewish community. Published in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph on November 26th 1939, was an extremely informative and interesting article by Burchett called “Nazis’ most subtle lies are in an atlas”. Throughout the article, Burchett addresses the serious issue of the cogent German Propaganda machine, and the effect that this propaganda has on the German people.

‘Unceasingly Nazi short-wave stations are churning out propaganda, but their most deadly propaganda does not come from the radio or the daily press, but is mingled with the daily life of the people’.

This sentence to me is quite haunting in the sense that Burchett writes this article as a warning against what the Nazis may be capable of. Burchett powerfully describes the German propaganda as ‘deadly’, a word that is synonymous with something lethal or murderous. Burchett would have essentially been writing this article in the same months that the Nazi party would have been planning the holocaust.

Could he have known that the country who’s political agenda was seemingly dangerous, were about to create possibly the darkest part of our world’s history, the extermination of the Jews?

Although it is not possible that The Holocaust could have been foreseen, Burchett article has extreme relevance as he suggests how easily the German people could be manipulated and subconsciously force-fed nationalism. During the article Burchett goes onto describe the ways in which the Nazi’s manipulate the German people by producing false propaganda. From something and simple and trivial as -

“’Kauft Deutsche Kameroon Bananen’ (buy German Cameroon Bananas)”,

planting the idea in peoples minds that the Cameroons actually did belong to Germany,

Too a far more serious method of manipulation.

Burchett explains how false German maps are shown to German students in schools, misleading the students as to which colonies throughout the world actually belong to Germany. Burchett believes that -

‘The purpose of this type of propaganda is obvious. The idea is to make the German people believe that these colonies actually belong to them, that the German people are the only one who have a rightful claim to them, and that powers now in possession are robbers. A similar type of atlas is used in the schools and the children are taught that these are German territories and that they must work for a strong Germany to drive out these robbers who despoil the Fatherland’.

Burchett goes on to say;

‘They (German Students) are educated in such a way that Hitler can say to them at the right moment, “We fight for justice to rid our empire of thieves and robbers, ”and that is why the youth follow him’.

But it isn’t just the youth of Germany that believe the lies that Hitler is telling his country.

Burchett tells of a conversation with a German taxi-driver –

“I asked him (Taxi Driver) very innocently why it was I couldn’t get any butter, fruit or eggs in Germany. I added that I had been impressed in reading all that the Fuehrer had done for Germany, yet I couldn’t but enough food to eat. He became absolutely furious. ‘Why did you take our colonies away from us?’ he asked. ‘If we only had colonies like England or France then we could have plenty to eat too,’ He added”.

In the final paragraph Burchett states that –

‘Hitler is able to persuade his people to accept his decisions when the times comes because all his careful ground work is done in advance with the masses of his people carefully educated in the ‘Justice’ of his policy, months and sometimes years in advance of his actual moves’.

From reading this article it is obvious to see how Hitler could have manipulated the German people into believing that the Jews were an inferior race and that it is their right, or duty to eliminate this inferior race, that may ultimately be a threat to the dominance of their country.

Over 200,000 people died as a result of an Atomic Bomb, dropped by the US army in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Whilst most journalists across the globe were focused greatly on reporting the Japanese surrender, pro-active Burchett knew that the real story was in the doomed city itself, officially off limits to outsiders. Burchett decided to strike out on his own and see for himself what this nuclear bomb had done, to understand what this unknown new weapon was all about. The only problem was that US General Douglas MacArthur had declared the tragic bomb site off-limits, banning the press, trying to keep the destruction the bomb caused concealed from the world. Purposely defying the US General’s Orders, Burchett boarded a train and traveled for almost thirty hours right into the city of Hiroshima.

When Burchett arrived in Hiroshima, the devastation that he saw in front of him was unlike anything he had ever seen before. ’He saw people's shadows seared into walls and sidewalks. He met people with their skin melting off. In the hospital, he saw patients with purple skin hemorrhages, gangrene, fever, and rapid hair loss. Burchett was among the first to witness and describe radiation sickness’ ().

Inspired by the horror, Burchett sat amidst the rubble of the war torn city with his typewriter and wrote the famous line "I write this as a warning to the world." Referring to the aforementioned mysterious symptoms that were occurring throughout the city of Hiroshima, Burchett could ‘only describe as the atomic plague’.

His Article began: ‘Hiroshima, which was atomic bombed on August 6, looks as though a monster steam roller had passed over and squashed it out of existence’.

Burchett's article, which was published on September 6, 1945, in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, caused a worldwide sensation. Burchett's honest reaction to the horror shocked readers across the globe. Burchett’s original report from Hiroshima was not sanitised; it was confronting and real, not sensationalised; this was the reality of the destruction.

As Burchett states:
‘The damage is far greater than photographs can show. After you find what was Hiroshima, you can look around for twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the pit of stomach to see such man-made destruction’.

Being the first western journalist to report from Hiroshima, the onus was on Burchett to successfully convey the physical destruction of Hiroshima into words. In the following execrable passage Burchett reports on what he finds in the hospitals of Hiroshima. As confronting as this passage may be, it is extremely effective in conveying to the reader the horrible after effects of the atomic bomb.

‘They lost their appetites, their hair fell out, and bluish spots appeared on their bodies. They then began bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. Doctors first diagnosed them as suffered from general debility, and gave them vitamin injections. The results were horrible. Their flesh began rotting away from their bones, and in every case the victim died. Minor insect bites developed into great swellings, which would not heal. Slight cuts from falling brick and steel splinters caused acute sickness. The victims began bleeding from the gums, then they vomited blood, and died’.

Burchett's searing independent reportage was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. General MacArthur had gone to pains to restrict journalists' access to the bombed cities, and his military censors were sanitizing and even killing dispatches that described the horror. The official narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation. Reporters whose dispatches convicted with this version of events found themselves silenced:

General MacArthur ordered Burchett to be removed from Japan, and his camera with photos of Hiroshima mysteriously vanished while he was in the hospital. U.S. officials accused Burchett of being influenced by Japanese propaganda. They scoffed at the notion of an atomic sickness. The U.S. military issued a press release right after the Hiroshima bombing that downplayed human casualties, instead emphasizing that the bombed area was the site of valuable industrial and military targets.

If Wilfred Burchett had not gone to Hiroshima how would the world have learnt of the atom bomb’s terrible impact?

‘No other politician, correspondent or observer from Australia commanded more attention on the world stage than Wilfred Burchett’(p.17 The exile)

His long-standing friendship with Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, enabled him to live among the Vietcong.

Throughout his life as an investigative journalist, Wilfred Burchett earned himself the reputation of being not only one of the best journalists of his time, but also as an extremely controversial journalist. ‘No other politician, correspondent or observer from Australia commanded more attention on the world stage than Wilfred Burchett’(p.17 The exile). But casting a huge shadow over his extremely talented and courageous journalism, was the bitter controversy that surrounded his tendency to report from the opposing sides of various conflicts, including the Korean and the Vietnam wars. Because Burchett chose to report from the 'other side', these unorthodox views and activities caused him to be labelled a traitor by many Australians. An article claims that ‘There is no doubt that Burchett was a thoroughly despicable man, a man who hated his country and who should have been imprisoned for his treason’ (Gerard Jackson, Monday 9 August 2004, . But it was this courage and determination to report the absolute truth, even if the truth did not support his nation’s political agenda that made Wilfred Burchett’s journalism impact so significantly on the times in which he wrote, and still has resonance in today’s age.