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Wilfred Burchett spent much of his life reporting war from the ‘other side’ leading to the Australian journalist being named as a KGB agent and being accused of involvement in the interrogation of American POWs by the North Koreans.

Program Transcript

Stephen Crittenden: Today we’re looking at the life and reputation of Australia’s most controversial journalist, Wilfred Burchett, beginning with this moment from the ‘PM’ program in 1973.

PM Presenter: The controversial Australian journalist, Wilfred Burchett, returned home today legally for the first time in 21 years. He lost his Australian passport in 1955 and the Australian government refused to renew it until the change of government last year. This was because of Burchett’s reporting of the Korean and Vietnam wars from the Communist sides. His critics here branded him as a traitor and a Communist, and have called for a government inquiry into his activities.

Mr Burchett, who’s now 61, was obviously angry when reporters raised the question of an inquiry at his press conference at Sydney airport today.

Wilfred Burchett: I came back three years ago and challenged the government. I took the initiative and said ‘I want you to appoint an inquiry to which I’ll give evidence under oath, and let’s clear up whatever you say you have against me’. Of course they refused, and you know very well that the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General both made statements in parliament to say that Burchett had broken no law and that’s that. And if I had, how could you explain for instance, that for years the government tried by all possible means to prevent me from coming back. If I’d committed some crimes, they should have had people all over the world trying to kidnap me and drag me back.

Reporter: Your reporting was from the Communist side; Australian troops were fighting on the other side.

Wilfred Burchett: And how many more journalists were reporting from the Communist side? How many New York Times, Washington Post, CBS people went to Hanoi and how many hundreds more, including Australians, asked to come to Hanoi to look at the other side?

Reporter: How do you react to statements –

Wilfred Burchett: Whose war? Look, whose war? If there were Vietnamese invading Australia, and were fighting on Australian soil, that would be one question. But I was against Australian troops killing and being killed in a cause which had nothing whatsoever to do with Australian, with no identifiable Australian interest.

Reporter: Mr Burchett how do you react to statements that people call you a traitor?

Wilfred Burchett: Well my first reaction is to ask them to say that in print and I’ll sue them.

Reporter: You say you’re not a Communist, where exactly do you stand politically?

Wilfred Burchett: Where do I stand politically? As a journalist, first of all I’m completely independent, I’m sure it’s true to say I’m more independent than anybody in this room.

Stephen Crittenden: Wilfred Burchett speaking at a press conference at Sydney Airport in 1973, which he described as the most undisciplined he’d ever attended, conducted at the lowest professional level he had ever seen.

Wilfred Burchett died in exile in 1983, and his autobiography ‘Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist’ has just been published by New South Wales University Press, edited by his son George Burchett and Nick Shimmin, who describes Burchett in the opening line of his preface as ‘the greatest journalist Australia has ever produced’.

Was he that? Or was he, as he was described at the defamation case he lost in 1974, ‘a petty, conniving communist propaganda hack’? Certainly anyone who’s ever read Burchett’s other book, ‘The People’s Democracies: A Factual Survey’, published in 1951, will remember it as a 283-page apologia for Stalin’s Europe, nothing more, nothing less.

Here’s Robert Manne, discussing Burchett’s reputation 20 years ago on Background Briefing.

Robert Manne: The first question is whether or not he was an outstanding journalist or a propagandist for a particular movement. Now I think it’s clear that he was a propagandist for the Communist movement. If someone supports a cause as he did the Communist movement, then to judge whether or not he’s a propagandist is to judge whether or not he would he would bring up matters that were unfavourable to his cause in his reporting. In my view, he never did. And in particular, I’ve made a fairly detailed analysis of his reporting in the Korean War, and there is not a syllable of criticism of the side he supports, not a word of praise for the side that he is against, which is the side of the United Nations, which the Australian forces were supporting.

The second question is whether or not he is an agent or not of the Communist side. Now I think there’s considerable evidence that he was an agent in the very specific sense that he accepted money for service, and that he was paid and decorated by the Communist movement from the 1950s through at least to the 1970s.

The third question is whether or not he was a traitor. Now I think there’s one important case in which the question of treason arises, which is the Korean War in which he was an Australian citizen; he supported the side that was shooting at Australian troops to the best of his abilities, and he did I think, things which were very shameful. Most importantly he was involved in getting false confessions from American air pilots, and then displaying these confessions to the world as a sign of the guilt of the Americans over germ warfare.

Man: Here he comes!

CROWD YELLING

Man: Go back to Russia!

Reporter: Is it fair to say, do you think, that you were supporting the other side, the Communist side?

Wilfred Burchett: I certainly was with my articles. I mean everything is on the record. I opposed the United Nations action in Korea, which means that I supported the Koreans and the Chinese.

Robert Manne: I think he gave more support to the Communist side during Korea than any single soldier could have done, even at the highest level, because the pen may not be mightier than the sword, but one pen wielded by someone like Burchett, is much mightier than one sword, and he did very great work with his pen, and with his tape recorder to help in various ways the Communist side.

Stephen Crittenden: Robert Manne.

Well we’re joined now by George Burchett, who has co-edited ‘Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist’. George Burchett, welcome to the program. Parts of this autobiography have been published before, why did you want to publish it again?

George Burchett: The reason I wanted to publish it again is because of what’s happening around the world in terms of the role of the media, the way we are being lied into wars again, etc., and it sort of reminded me of my Dad’s story. He reported wars, he was accused of propaganda when I think he was actually telling the truth, so all this stuff about truth, propaganda, official lies, cover-ups etc., I think it’s perfectly relevant to today.

Stephen Crittenden: What had been left out that’s in here that people would not have read before?

George Burchett: Well the original book was published in New York, London and Melbourne in 1981