The Strange Silencing of Liberal America

Monday 11 July 2011

by: John Pilger, Truthout | Op-Ed

How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film, "Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia," was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. But what? "Year Zero" had already alerted much of the world to the horrors of Pol Pot, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant's rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia.

Six months later, a PBS official told me, "This wasn't censorship. We're into difficult political days in Washington. Your film would have given us problems with the Reagan administration. Sorry."