James Miller

Documentary-maker

James Miller, film-maker: born 18 December 1968; married 1997 Sophy Warren-Knott (one son, one daughter); died Rafah, Occupied Territories 2 May 2003.

Had James Miller lived, this laughing, mischievous, decent man would have come to be recognised as one of the greatest documentary-makers of his generation. As it is he leaves a journalistic legacy of immense worth.

He began his television career with the Frontline agency in 1995. I first met him in Algeria where, with typical bravery, he was reporting on that country's vicious civil war. He reported from most of the major trouble spots during the last decade but he was never gung-ho or a war-junkie. He was a thoughtful and sensitive journalist who went to these places in search of essential truths.

Miller had worked for all the leading news broadcasters in Britain, as well as CNN. At the time of his death – he was shot dead in the Gaza Strip – he was making a film for the US cable network HBO. He was one of the team which made Prime Suspect, a film on war crimes in Kosovo that won the Royal Television Society prize for Best International Current Affairs Programme. Whether it was reporting on the death squads of Slobodan Milosevic or the Russian bombing of a refugee convoy in Chechnya, Miller placed the rights of the vulnerable at the top his priorities.

It was in the last two years that his talents brought him international acclaim. Together with the reporter Saira Shah, he produced a groundbreaking film on life under the Taliban, Beneath the Veil. Their work in Afghanistan was to win them two Emmys, several Royal Television Society awards, a Bafta and a Peabody.

Miller was born in 1968 in Pembrokeshire, the younger son of Geoffrey Miller, an army officer, and his wife, Eileen, a headmistress. He grew up in the West Country, but from ages six to eight lived in the Outer Hebrides, where his parents were posted. He was educated at Downside and later at the London College of Printing, where within a few weeks his tutors promoted him to the postgraduate course in photo-journalism. He worked as a photographer before moving in to television.

I worked with James Miller on a documentary about the genocide of the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. From the outset his attitude was robust. He had no personal animus against Turkey or the Turkish people, but he was determined to ask the tough questions and use, where the facts warranted, tough language. Miller believed in unambiguous truth-telling and would never have compromised in the face of official disapproval or attack.

With his sense of mischief, he was a dangerous man to sit near during any encounter with a bore or a pedant. Once in the middle of a spectacularly tedious interview he caught my eye – he was sitting directly behind the interviewee – and smiled. Then he began to giggle. In a few seconds he was rocking with silent mirth. I naturally dissolved into laughter myself, frantically trying to cover it up by developing a coughing fit. The interviewee was – like all good bores – totally unaware of our discomfort.

Fergal Keane