John Pilger‘s worldwide reputation for excellence in documentary filmmaking speaks for itself. His latest offering is perhaps his best piece of work to date.

The War You Don’t See turns the TV News cameras back on the newsmakers and asks questions about the close relationship between government departments and the journalists who report on the war.

In the last 20 years the UK has gone from having just four main TV channels to well over 900 on cable and satellite—the majority of which being owned by Rupert Murdoch. Scattered among the perpetual “still to come after the break” docu-soaps, quiz shows, physic reading interactive phone-ins and music video pleb-fests, Sky News, Fox News, BBC News, CNN, CNBC, RT, EuroNews and one or two others, broadcast rolling news 24 hours a day. Each singing from the same hymn sheet, to cause as little fuss as possible in the government departments they’re supposed to be holding to account.

Pilger argues that, in the case of the Iraq war, had journalists at the BBC and other UK based news gathering organisations asked more probing questions of Tony Blair’s Labour government, the propaganda used to justify the invasion might have been exposed long before the dodgy dossier and the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths it caused.

If you live in the UK you can watch a repeat of this incredible film via ITV Player, resplendent with adverts you can’t skip and browser crashing fun and games from Adobe Flash. If you live in the rest of the world, buy your copy here. Don’t be tempted to break their law and search The Pirate Bay for it. That would be illegal and you’ll go to gaol like the savage enemy of democracy that you are. Either way, you really should watch this incredible film and insist, beg and demand that everyone you know watches it as well.

Now here’s Tom with the weather.