Orwell the Journalist, On Journalism

As the book progressed, passages where Orwell talked about how journalists were dictating the terms of the war from hundreds of miles distance of the fronts stuck out to me. Perhaps because he was a writer who sought first person experience, when he wrote about journalists who harmfully did otherwise, his writing was very clear.

The people who write that stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalist do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history--a jingo with a bullet-hole in him. (pg 66)

Orwell gets his bullet later--so it makes me very happy that he still feels strongly enough about the life/death consequences of propaganda that he continues to hold that image of justice.

I am aware that it is now the fashion to deny that socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. (pg 104)

I never expected the motif of journalistic mistrust to be the very thing that disillusioned Orwell to the war--I had just been seeing it as a minor gripe like Graves had had. But the detail with which he makes his case in Chapter XI and XII--the concern he has about the lack of credible sources to which future generations will have to look to--all of that was hugely inspiring even if it was the less narratively fruitful as the rest of the book. He noticed all that right away--eight months or so after he was out of the country, he knew there was a shortage of real journalism on the war that he'd experienced. New hero.