Kapuściński, More Magical than Real

Author: Michela Wrong, John Pilger
Source: New Statesman, February 12, 2007
Link: https://www.newstatesman.com/media/2007/02/kapuscinski-journalism-africa

Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info. The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available at the New Statesman.

An article published three weeks after Kapuscinski’s death by the New Statesman — among the first interventions by experienced Western correspondents in the argument over his legacy.

Michela Wrong — the British journalist and author of reportage from Congo, Kenya and Rwanda — puts the question that had been avoided for years: was the enthusiasm for Kapuscinski in Western newsrooms based partly on readers’ ignorance of Africa? Where the writing was beautiful, the details went unchecked. Wrong knows the continent too well to miss the simplifications.

John Pilger — the Australian investigative journalist, known for giving no quarter — nevertheless defends Kapuscinski’s fundamental impulse: the choice to stand with the weaker party, the refusal of objectivity as a myth that serves power. Pilger argues that Kapuscinski understood that “facts” in journalism are always a selection — and that he made that selection deliberately, on behalf of those without a voice.

The piece does not settle the argument, but it defines it precisely: the question is not whether Kapuscinski lied, but what kind of truth he thought worth telling, and by what means.