| Coordinates | 40°57′50″N76°53′17″N |
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| Name | John Pilger |
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| Birth place | Sydney, Australia |
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| Residence | United Kingdom |
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| Nationality | Australian |
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| Occupation | Journalist, writer, documentary filmmaker |
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| Website | www.johnpilger.com |
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John Richard Pilger (born 9 October 1939) is an Australian
journalist and
documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US.
Since his early years as a war correspondent in Vietnam, Pilger has been a trenchant critic of the foreign policy of the West. He is particularly opposed to many aspects of United States foreign policy, which he regards as being driven by a largely imperialist agenda.
In Breaking the Silence: The Television Reporting of John Pilger, his appraisal of the journalist's documentaries, Anthony Hayward wrote, "For more than a generation, he has been an ever stronger voice for those without a voice and a thorn in the side of authority, the Establishment. His work, particularly his television documentaries, has also made him rare in being a journalist who is universally known, a champion of those for whom he fights and the scourge of politicians and others whose actions he exposes."
Noam Chomsky said of Pilger: "John Pilger's work has been a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities he has brought to light have been a revelation, over and over again, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration."
Life and career
Pilger was born in
Bondi, a suburb of Sydney. He attended
Sydney Boys High School, where he started a student newspaper,
The Messenger. He began as a copy boy with the
Sydney Sun in 1958 and later moved to the city's
Daily Telegraph. In the early 1960s he was recruited by the British
Daily Mirror. He has been based in London ever since.
On 5 June 1968 he witnessed the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Pilger says "there's no question that there was another gunman".
During the Daily Mirror 's campaigning heyday Pilger became its star reporter, particularly on social issues. He was a war correspondent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra. Later, TV documentaries and books cemented his reputation.
Activities of the military
Vietnam
"
The Quiet Mutiny" in 1970 was the first of over 60 documentary films by Pilger. Filmed at
Camp Snuffy, the film presented a character study of the common US soldier during the
Vietnam War, revealing the shifting
morale and open rebellion of Western troops. Pilger described the film as "something of a scoop" - it was the first documentary to show the open rebellion within the drafted ranks of the US military that led to the withdrawal of the land army in 1973. "When I flew to New York and showed it to
Mike Wallace, the star reporter of
CBS'
60 Minutes, he agreed. "Real shame we can't show it here"", Pilger said in an interview with the
New Statesman.
Further films about Vietnam followed on from "The Quiet Mutiny" - "" (1974), "Do You Remember Vietnam?" (1978) and "" (1995)
Cambodia
In 1979, John Pilger and two colleagues with whom he collaborated for many years, film director David Munro and photographer Eric Piper, entered
Cambodia in the wake of the overthrow of the
Pol Pot regime. The result was a series of world exclusives, the first of which occupied almost the entire
Daily Mirror, which sold out. This was followed by an
ITV documentary, "Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia", which brought to people's living rooms the suffering of the
Khmer people. Some $45 million was raised, unsolicited, in mostly small donations following the showing of Year Zero, including almost £4 million raised by schoolchildren in the UK. This funded the first substantial relief to Cambodia, including life saving drugs like penicillin and the manufacture of clothes to replace the black uniforms people had been forced to wear. Thanks to "Year Zero", said Brian Walker, director of
Oxfam, "a solidarity and compassion surged across our nation". Pilger and Munro went on to make another four films on Cambodia. During the filming of Cambodia Year One, they were warned that Pilger was on a
Khmer Rouge 'death list' and, in one incident, they narrowly escaped an ambush. The
British Film Institute (BFI) has described Year Zero as one of the ten most influential documentary films of the 20th century.
John Pilger describes the British reaction to 'Year Zero': "The documentary as a television "event" can send ripples far and wide... 'Year Zero' not only revealed the horror of the Pol Pot years, it showed how Richard Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's "secret" bombing of that country had provided a critical catalyst for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. It also exposed how the west, led by the United States and Britain, was imposing an embargo, like a medieval siege, on the most stricken country on earth. This was a reaction to the fact that Cambodia's liberator was Vietnam - a country that had come from the wrong side of the Cold War and that had recently defeated the US. Cambodia's suffering was a wilful revenge. Britain and the US even backed Pol Pot's demand that his man continue to occupy Cambodia's seat at the UN, while Margaret Thatcher stopped children's milk going to the survivors of his nightmare regime. Little of this was reported. Had 'Year Zero' simply described the monster that Pol Pot was, it would have been quickly forgotten. By reporting the collusion of "our" governments, it told a wider truth about how the world was run. Within two days of 'Year Zero' going to air, 40 sacks of post arrived at ATV (later Central Television) in Birmingham - 26,000 first-class letters in the first post alone. The station quickly amassed £1m, almost all of it in small amounts. "This is for Cambodia," wrote a Bristol bus driver, enclosing his week's wage. Entire pensions were sent, along with entire savings. Petitions arrived at Downing Street, one after the other, for weeks. MPs received hundreds of thousands of letters, demanding that British policy change (which it did, eventually). And none of it was asked for. For me, the public response to 'Year Zero' gave the lie to clichés about "compassion fatigue", an excuse that some broadcasters and television executives use to justify the current descent into the cynicism and passivity of Big Brotherland. Above all, I learned that a documentary could reclaim shared historical and political memories, and present their hidden truths. The reward then was a compassionate and an informed public; and it still is."
East Timor
In 1993 Pilger slipped into East Timor and filmed "Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy." The revelations of this film alerted the public to the horror of the Indonesian occupation of
East Timor, which began in 1975. "Death of a Nation" prompted an international outcry and helped force Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor and eventual independence in 2000. When "Death of a Nation" was screened in Britain it was the highest rating documentary in 15 years and 4000 telephone calls per minute were recorded on the action line set up after the program. When "Death of a Nation" was screened in Australia in June 1994, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans declared that Pilger "had a track record of distorted sensationalism mixed with sanctimony." .
Diego Garcia
Pilger's 2004 film
Stealing a Nation told the story of the people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. In the 1960s and 70s, British governments expelled the entire population of the
Chagos Archipelago, dumping them in the slums of Mauritius. The aim was to give the principal island of this Crown Colony,
Diego Garcia, to the Americans who wanted it as a major military base, from where US planes have since bombed Afghanistan and Iraq. The International Criminal Court later described this act as "a crime against humanity". Pilger strongly criticised Tony Blair for not making any real response to the 2000
High Court ruling that the British expulsion of the
island's natives to
Mauritius in order to make way for a
US Air Force base had been illegal.
In March 2005, Stealing a Nation was awarded Britain's most prestigious documentary prize, the Royal Television Society Award.
In May 2006, the UK High Court ruled in favour of the Chagossians in their battle to prove they were illegally removed by the UK government during the depopulation of Diego Garcia, paving the way for a return to their homeland. The leader of the Chagos Refugee Group, Olivier Bancoult, described it as a "special day, a day to remember". In May 2007, the UK Government's appeal against the 2006 High Court ruling was dismissed and they took the matter to the House of Lords. In October 2008, the House of Lords ruled in favour of the Government, overturning the original High Court ruling.
Political views
Criticism of Australia
Pilger has long been a critic of Australian government policy, particularly of what he regards as its inherent
racism and the poor treatment of its indigenous population. Pilger wrote that the legislation that removed common law rights of Aborigines (
Wik), "is just one of the disgraces that has given Australia the distinction of being the only developed country whose government has been condemned as racist by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination."
World leaders
In addition to criticizing the policies of former
United States President George W. Bush, Pilger has also taken aim at former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he believes to be just as culpable as President Bush for the
invasion and
occupation of Iraq.
On 25 July 2005, Pilger ascribed blame for the 2005 London bombings that took place the same month to Blair, whose decision to follow Bush helped to generate the rage that he maintains precipitated those bombings.
In the same column a year later, Pilger described Blair as a war criminal for supporting Israel's actions during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. He also asserted that Blair gave permission to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 to initiate what would ultimately become Operation Defensive Shield.
Pilger has also criticised United States President Barack Obama, describing him as "a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb Pakistan." and whose theme "was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully." Pilger asserts, "In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government."
Latin America
His 2007 film
The War on Democracy was Pilger's first cinema release and was named Best Documentary at the 2008 One World Media Awards. The film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with Latin American countries such as
Venezuela,
Bolivia and
Chile. Using archive footage sourced by
Michael Moore's archivist
Carl Deal, the film shows how serial US intervention, overt and covert, has toppled a series of legitimate governments in the region since the 1950s. The democratically elected Chilean government of
Salvador Allende, for example, was ousted by a US backed coup in 1973 and replaced by the military dictatorship of
General Pinochet. Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries. He investigates the School of the Americas in the US state of Georgia, where Pinochet’s torture squads were reportedly trained along with tyrants and death squad leaders in
Haiti,
El Salvador,
Brazil and
Argentina. The film also unearths the real story behind the attempted overthrow of Venezuela's President
Hugo Chávez in 2002 and how the people of
Caracas rose up to force his return to power. It looks at the wider rise of populist governments across South America lead by indigenous leaders intent on loosening the shackles of Washington and a fairer redistribution of the continent's natural wealth. "[The film] is about," says Pilger, "the struggle of people to free themselves from a modern form of slavery". These people, he says, "describe a world not as American presidents like to see it as useful or expendable, they describe the power of courage and humanity among people with next to nothing. They reclaim noble words like democracy, freedom, liberation, justice, and in doing so they are defending the most basic human rights of all of us in a war being waged against all of us".
In May 2007, Pilger co-signed and put forward a letter supporting the refusal of the government of Venezuela to renew the broadcasting licence of Venezuela's largest television network Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), as they openly supported a 2002 coup attempt against the democratically elected government. Pilger and other signatories suggest that if the BBC or ITV used their news broadcasts to publicly support a coup against the British government, they would suffer similar consequences. Other groups, such as Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, have described the RCTV decision as an effort to stifle freedom of expression.
Other Pilger documentaries
Other documentaries have exposed human rights abuses in
Burma, Australia, the
Israeli-occupied territories, in
Iraq as a consequence of
UN sanctions and in
Afghanistan. Following broadcast on ITV in the UK, the 2002 documentary Palestine is Still the Issue, was highly criticised by the UK press for being inaccurate and biased. One of the executives at Carlton TV, which had commissioned the documentary, commented "This is a sad day for the truth". As a result of the controversy, the UK television regulator, the ITC, ordered an investigation. Pilger was completely exonerated, as that report stated the entire documentary was based on verified facts.
The Media
Mainstream journalism
Pilger has a bi-weekly column in
New Statesman, which is his most frequent outlet. He is a strong critic of the institutions and economic forces that structure 'mainstream' journalism. In an address at
Columbia University on 14 April 2006, he said:
Pilger said, while speaking to journalism students at the University of Lincoln, that mainstream journalism means corporate journalism, and as such represents vested corporate interests over those of the public.
He is particularly scornful of pro-Iraq war commentators on the liberal left, or 'liberal interventionists', such as Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch.
Honours and awards
Sydney Peace Prize
Pilger has received
human rights and journalism awards, including the Richard Dimbleby Award for factual reporting at the 1990
BAFTA Awards, as well as honorary doctorates. He was awarded the
Sydney Peace Prize at a ceremony at the Sydney Opera House in November 2009. The jury’s citation reads as follows: "For work as an author, film-maker and journalist as well as for courage as a foreign and war correspondent in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard. For commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form."
Other awards
Awards include:
Descriptive Writer of the Year (1966)
Reporter of the Year (1967)
Journalist of the Year (1967)
International Reporter of the Year (1970)
News Reporter of the Year (1974)
Campaigning Journalist of the Year (1977)
Journalist of the Year(1979)
UN Media Peace Prize, Australia (1979 – 80)
UN Media Peace Prize and Gold Medal, Australia (1980 – 81)
TV Times Readers' Award (1979)
United Kingdom Academy Award (1990)
The George Foster Peabody Award, USA (1990)
American Television Academy Award ('Emmy') (1991)
British Academy of Film and Television Arts – The Richard Dimbleby Award (1991)
Reporters Sans Frontiers Award, France (1990)
International de Television Geneve Award (1995)
The Monismanien Prize, Sweden (2001)
The Sophie Prize for Human Rights, Norway (2003)
EMMA Media Personality of the Year (2003)
Royal Television Society – Best British Documentary for Stealing a Nation (2004)
One World Media Awards - TV Documentary Award for his ITV1 film
The War on Democracy, on the role of Washington in Latin American politics. (2008)
Sydney Peace Prize, Australia (2009)
Degrees and honorary degrees:
Hon. D. Litt. (Staffordshire)
D. Phil. (Dublin City)
D. Arts (Oxford Brooks and Kingston)
D. Arts (University of Lincoln)
D. Arts (Rhodes University, South Africa)
Hon. LL.D. (St Andrews)
DUniv (Open University, UK)
Edward Wilson Fellow, Deakin University (Australia)
Visiting Professor, Cornell University, USA
Quotes
"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it" (1998)
"If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I've seen, if they'd watched children fry to death from
Napalm and bleed to death from a
cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do." (2005)
"The impact of the human tragedies I've reported on is that, more often than not, I'll be angry. I want to know why is this child dying? These are not acts of God; they're results of respectable politicians' decisions." (2005)
"We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly." (2009)
"There is no War on Terrorism; it is
The Great Game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the
superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all." (2002)
"More
terrorists are given
training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on earth. They include
mass murderers,
torturers, former and future
tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth." (2002)
On the
September 11 attacks: "In these surreal days, there is one truth. Nothing justified the killing of innocent people in America last week and nothing justifies the killing of innocent people anywhere else." (2001)
"When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful
Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience." (2005)
"The censorship is such on television in the US that films like mine don't stand a chance." (2002)
"Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what
George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'objectivity' is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over... [they] now mean the establishment point of view... Journalists don't sit down and think, 'I'm now going to speak for the establishment.' Of course not. But they internalise a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity." (2002)
"We journalists... have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country... That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home... In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us... Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power." (2010)
"I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by
Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win." (2005)
John Simpson, the
BBC's world affairs editor, has said, "A country that does not have a John Pilger in its journalism is a very feeble place indeed."
Criticism
Gerard Henderson, the former Chief of Staff for
John Howard, is one of Pilger's most vocal critics and has accused him of "engaging in hyperbole against western democracies."
The English writer
Auberon Waugh, writing in
The Spectator in the 1970s in response to an article Pilger had written alleging Thai complicity in child trafficking, coined the verb "to pilger",
to present information in a sensationalist manner to reach a foregone conclusion.
Noam Chomsky has expressed the view that "pilger" and "pilgerise" were "invented by journalists furious about his incisive and courageous reporting, and knowing that the only response they are capable of is ridicule."
Chronology
1958–62: Reporter, freelance writer, sports writer and sub-editor - Daily & Sunday Telegraph, Sydney
1962: Freelance correspondent - Italy 1962
1962–63: Middle East desk, Reuters, London
1963–86: Reporter, sub-editor, feature writer and Chief Foreign Correspondent - Daily Mirror
1969–71: Reporter, World in Action, Granada Television
1974–81: Reporter/Producer, ATV
1987: A founder of News on Sunday, London, and titular Editor-in-Chief but resigned before publication
1981 to present: Documentary film-maker, Central, Carlton Television and ITV
Bibliography
Books
The Last Day (1975)
Aftermath: The Struggles of Cambodia and Vietnam (1981)
The Outsiders (1984)
Heroes (1986)
A Secret Country (1989)
Distant Voices (1992 and 1994)
Hidden Agendas (1998)
Reporting the World: John Pilger's Great Eyewitness Photographers (2001)
The New Rulers of the World (2002)
Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs (ed.) Cape (2004)
Freedom Next Time (2006)
Plays
The Last Day (1983)
Selected documentaries
Vietnam-The Quiet Mutiny 1971
An Unfashionable Tragedy 1975
Zap-The Weapon is Food 1976
Do You Remember Vietnam 1978
1979
The Mexicans 1980
Heroes 1980
Burp! Pepsi V Coke in the Ice Cold War 1982
In Search Of Truth In Wartime 1982
Nicaragua. A Nations Right to Survive 1983
The Truth Game 1983
The Secret Country-The First Australians Fight Back 1985
Japan Behind the Mask 1987
Cambodia: The Betrayal 1990
War By Other Means 1992
Cambodia: Return to Year Zero 1993
Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy 1994
Flying the Flag, Arming the World 1994
Vietnam: the Last Battle 1995
Inside Burma: Land of Fear 1996
Breaking the Mirror - The Murdoch Effect 1997
Welcome To Australia 1999
(2000)
The New Rulers of the World (2001)
Palestine Is Still the Issue (2002)
(2003)
Stealing a Nation (2004)
The War on Democracy (2007)
The War You Don't See (2010)
References
External links
John Pilger - official website
John Pilger at IMDb
Freedom Next Time: Filmmaker & Journalist John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press, Censorship and Resisting the American Empire, Democracy Now!, August 7, 2007.
Listen and Watch.
John Pilger at Random House Australia
John Pilger: There Is a War on Journalism - video interview by Democracy Now!
John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism - video report by Democracy Now!
Category:1939 births
Category:Living people
Category:Australian documentary filmmakers
Category:Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom
Category:Australian journalists
Category:Australian freelance journalists
Category:Investigative journalists
Category:People from Sydney
Category:War correspondents
