Good journalism under adverse circumstances

Current Concerns: Mr. Pohlmann, until 2016 you worked for public-sector broadcasters in Germany as a writer and director of important documentary films.  But then you left them and since then have only been filming and writing for independent media. What do you think is missing in today’s mainstream journalism?
Dirk Pohlmann: What is missing is an openness to deal with lines of argumentation and questions that do not submit to government dictates and do not conform to the prevailing discourse. It is about listening to people who move outside the authorised discourse corridor. There is a lack of fairness towards those who think differently. There is a lack of chivalry towards people who are less able to articulate themselves. Their problems are not taken seriously. They are judged rather than listened to. The classic form of reportage is missing: Go and write it down, take a look at what’s going on. Just show empathy, empathise with what you encounter. This towards the lower part of society. And when it comes to the upper part, there is a lack of inquisitive criticism and the question: What do you actually mean by what you are saying?
  Basically, I can also say that an creative approach to life is missing. Not making preconceived judgements and so on, but being curious and getting involved in something – and also extending this to other cultures. For example: Why do we have so few interviews with Chinese people about China? Why are there no interviews with North Koreans? Why do we know so little about Iran? So it’s about talking to people there and not judging them. A good example was the interview that The Greyzone conducted in 2001 with a representative of Ansar Allah (‘Helpers of God’) in Yemen – we call them Houthi, but they don’t call themselves that. That really impressed me. I had a Karl May feeling. I thought Kara Ben Nemsi was talking to me. What was said was honourable in a way and I thought: There’s something much closer to the truth than what I can hear in the media here. I get these ready-made statements from PR professionals. The way he spoke, the Houthi spokesman, was completely different. Although it was a spokesman for a political organisation, it had a big impact on me, because I had the feeling that I had never heard anyone speak like that before.

What have been milestones or highlights of your journalistic career so far?
That was the Swedish submarine affair. Understanding how psychological warfare could be used to eliminate a government, namely that of Olof Palme, including its foreign policy, which was based on détente with the East. These were two documentary films – “In feindlichen Tiefen. Der geheime U-Boot-Krieg der Supermächte» (In hostile depths. The Superpowers’ Secret Submarine War” (2005) and “Täuschung, die Methode Reagan.” (Deception, the Reagan Method) (2014) – that I made nine years apart, which helped me understand some very basic things. Many people know the two films. But that hasn’t led to the political pattern being seen through, for example in Sweden. For a decade, from 2000 to 2010, people were aware of what was going on, but not today. So you can see: What is not repeated often enough is not a reality for the people.

What are the names of other documentary films of yours?
One of the first documentary films I made was called “Abschuss über der Sowjetunion. Der geheime Luftkrieg der Supermächte.” (Downed over the Soviet Union. The secret air war of the superpowers.) (2003). That was the moment when I started to deal with intelligence operations. I lived at the centre of some of these operations, at Frankfurt Airport and near Wiesbaden, and I had no idea about these operations. And the people in Frankfurt at the airport and in Wiesbaden had no idea either. It was like going on an expedition to the central Congo in 1850 and everything was new. It was astonishing how little we knew about it.
  And then the documentary film about the Israeli nuclear weapons programme – ”Israel und die Bombe – Ein radioaktives Tabu.” (Israel and the Bomb – A Radioactive Taboo.” (2012) – because I realised, there are frontier areas. When you enter them, you realise that there is mined area; there are watchtowers, searchlights and other things, you notice from the reaction that you are now in a dangerous area. You can only work in the TV stations if you pretend that these areas don’t exist. But when you enter them, you realise that they really do exist, and then things go crazy, and that has consequences.
  Then there is also archaeological documentation. We travelled to Tibet on foot over the Himalayas, to an area that was a restricted military zone, to Kashmir. And it was a very interesting experience, walking over the Himalayas at an altitude of 4200 metres, it was a journey of a lifetime. And then my very first documentary in 1990, when I was on an expedition in Greenland. That was in the continental ice, nothing but snow and ice, looking for six aeroplanes from the Second World War. That was extremely impressive. There were even more milestones, but enough for now.

What was the reason for you to end your cooperation with the public media? 
The last documentary I made for rbb [the public broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg] was in 2016, thanks to the kind help of a very honourable man at rbb. He was head of the science department and then retired. He kept bringing me back. The reason I stopped working for ZDF (a German public-service television broadcaster) was that I had two absolutely astonishing interviews lined up that I wasn’t allowed to do. One was with the former head of the Soviet division in the CIA, Douglas MacEachin, who had agreed to give me an interview. I wanted to talk to him about the so-called “Underwater U-2”. This was the case of an allied western, i.e., a NATO-led submarine in Swedish waters. After an attack by the Swedes on this submarine, a US diver had to be treated in a Swedish hospital. At the time, everyone thought it was Soviet submarines that were entering Swedish waters in their hundreds. But it was an American diver who came out of that submarine and he had to be treated in a Swedish hospital. That’s why U-2. If this had been made public, it would have immediately made it clear that the story of the Soviet operation “entering Swedish waters” was nonsense. It was actually a Western submarine. And this interview was rejected by the production company.
  The second case, at the same shoot in Washington D.C.: A US colleague had agreed to put me in touch with two people from the Reagan administration who were prepared to testify that the changeover in Germany from Helmut Schmidt to Helmut Kohl – the no-confidence vote in 1982 – had taken place with the friendly support of the CIA by financially supporting the FDP (Free Democratic Party), which was bankrupt at the time. That was very controversial within the American Reagan administration, the colleague told me, because Schmidt was a loyal Atlanticist, but he also wanted to violate the US strategy with the natural gas pipe deal, to force the USSR into bankruptcy by minimising income and increasing expenditure through armaments. And these two people were ready to testify about this. I had registered these two interviews with the production company and then later again with ZDF. They were not wanted. Then I thought I’d be sent fishing, I’d come back with a great white shark, and nobody wanted it because the story was fundamentally too important.
  I didn’t say I would come back and broadcast it, I said I would come back with the interviews and then we can look at it together with a view to the change of power from Helmut Schmidt to Helmut Kohl and decide whether it is reliable enough. Big claims need big evidence. And that’s how I wanted to handle it. But they didn’t want to go there at all. That’s the opposite of journalism.

What was the rationale?
There was none, i.e. the production company simply said that extending the interview trip by one day was not within the budget. They had put the cameraman and me up in a hotel in the drug district of Washington, D.C. In the morning there was a dead body in the hallway and we had no electricity in the rooms. I thought to myself: that’s what you do with people you want to get rid of, accommodation like that. There were other reasons, too: I had been told that my films would be rewritten and recut without me in future to ensure their quality met ZDF’s requirements. The difficulties actually started for me after the documentary about Israeli nuclear weapons in 2012. I was informed confidentially via a contact that this documentary had caused a stir in Israel and Germany. The German government was “not amused”. I was told that there were talks going on at the top between the German government and ZDF. That’s why the documentary was not included on the cover of ZDF’s foreign sales brochure, as originally planned, because it was the first documentary about the history of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme. Also new in the documentary was the fact that Germany had co-financed at least a substantial part of the Israeli nuclear weapons programme, as was revealed in the Eichmann trial files. With 200 million Deutschmarks per year over 10 years! Around 1960, these were ludicrous sums. And there was a document for this in the declassified German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) documents from the Eichmann trial. And I also showed that, and it was also broadcast, including on ZDF, but apparently it wasn’t particularly well received. It was a decision that led to the border area I described. And it was also about the submarines that Germany supplied to Israel. These submarines enabled the Israelis to fire nuclear weapons from their submarines using modified Harpoon cruise missiles produced in the US, and everyone knew what that meant, but it wasn’t reported. And the German government went along with it under the motto: It can only be good for Israel.

What is good journalism for you?
To get to the bottom of things in such a way that you understand what the motives of the actors are and to prepare this for the public. I say “public” on purpose, I work for the public, not for my editor-in-chief, not for the broadcaster, not for my private fame, but for the people outside, my colleagues, also the politicians who are interested, who want to know what this issue is all about. I have investigated a whole series of very important facts in this way, so that people can understand what actually happened there, without leaving things out, without emphasising things that are unimportant. In other words, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In other words, to the best of your knowledge and belief. And in such a way that you are not guided by whether it is useful for the future, but in such a way – as would have been said in the past – that you can face your creator and say, I did the right thing. That’s how you should work as a journalist.

What do you think is needed for this today?
 I think it would be very important if we were to discuss – and this actually applies internationally – what the ethics of journalism could look like from this point of view. What is the task of a journalist? What can they do, what do they have to do, what is their responsibility? So all these questions, that there is a code of rules that you can refer to internally and externally, that you can say, in the spirit of Kant: I have done my duty. 
  I’ve just heard that my former professor at the University of Mainz said Julian Assange is not a journalist at all because he doesn’t write, select or report. But he has brought out the truth. That is one of the central aspects of what journalism is supposed to do. Incidentally, that was also the reasoning of the US Supreme Court in its judgement on the Pentagon Papers. There is freedom of speech and freedom of the press because the population has a right to the truth. I would say that we have a right to participate in the dissemination of facts that are important and that are not publicised because they are important, such as the clarification of the whole Nord Stream story. That is one of the most important tasks. And then I would say to him, precisely because he has set up a whistle-blower news agency, Julian Assange is one of the most important journalists of all.
  That was also the reason why people fought against him with such vigour that they even wanted to kill him. My wish for him is that he can now hopefully shake off everything that has happened to him in peace with his family. He deserves it, he doesn’t have to fight anymore, he has fought a lot. He can be at peace now and just be.

He has already said that he will continue.
I don’t think he can be stopped. I’m just saying he’s done enough, he should be allowed to retire and should be offered a drink wherever he goes.

Thank you very much, Mr Pohlmann, for this interview.  •

* Dirk Pohlmann, born in 1959, studied journalism, philosophy and law, obtained a Commercial Pilot Licence and instrument rating, was Managing Director of CargoLifter World GmbH and trained as a project manager. As a screenwriter and film director, he has produced more than 20 documentaries for arte, ZDF and ARD, which have been broadcast on TV in more than 20 countries, including the USA, Canada, Russia and Australia. He writes for numerous blogs, publishes in his own YouTube programmes “Das 3. Jahrtausend” (The third millennium) and “Geschichten aus Wikihausen” (Stories from Wikihausen). (This is about grotesque and post-factual content from Wikipedia, the editor) and is editor-in-chief of Free21. His book “Im Auftrag der Eliten” (On behalf of the elites) about the murder of Alfred Herrhausen and other political murders will be published at the end of the year