John Richard Pilger (born October 9, 1939) is a multi-award-winning Australian-born journalist and documentary filmmaker from Sydney, primarily based in London.

Life and career

Pilger was born in Bondi, a suburb of Sydney. He attended Sydney Boys High School and founded a student newspaper there, the Messenger. He acquired his first job in journalism as a copy boy with the Sydney Sun in 1958, later moving to The Daily Telegraph. Pilger left Australia to work for the Daily Mirror in Britain in the early 1960s and has since been based in that country.

Pilger acted as a war correspondent during conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra. His reputation steadily emerged through both his documentary films and the books he has written. One of his first documentary films, Year Zero, is credited with bringing to world attention for the first time the atrocities being committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. A number of his later documentaries have similarly focused upon what he alleges are human rights abuses perpetrated on civilian populations from the Israeli-occupied territories, to Indonesian East Timor and Iraq under UN sanctions.

In 1987 Pilger was involved with the left-wing tabloid News on Sunday which launched to great fanfare and went bankrupt eight weeks later. He had been appointed the editor-in-chief, but walked out before the first issue, having fallen out with the editor and the paper's backers.

Pilger has won many journalism and human rights awards, including Britain's prestigious Journalist of the Year award twice, and he has a number of honorary doctorates. He has a son Sam (born in 1973) and a daughter Zoe (born 1984).

Political views

Western foreign policy

Since his early years as a war correspondent in Vietnam, Pilger has been a trenchant critic of the foreign policy of many Western countries. He is particularly opposed to many aspects of United States foreign policy, which he regards as being driven by a largely imperialist agenda.

Mainstream journalism

Pilger 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:

During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. 'I have to tell you,' said their spokesman, 'that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?'

He is particularly scornful of pro-Iraq war commentators on the liberal left, or 'liberal interventionists', such as Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch.

In addition to criticizing the policies of 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.

In his column published in New Statesman 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.

Support of Hugo Chavez

Pilger is a supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. In May 2007 he 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, 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.

Diego Garcia

Pilger has written articles about the depopulation of Diego Garcia by the United Kingdom during the 1970s. He has 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.

Praise and criticism

Pilger is known for his polemical style, which has attracted both praise and criticism. Harold Pinter has said of his work: "John Pilger is fearless. He unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is . . . I salute him."

Auberon Waugh, on the other hand, coined the verb "to pilger", meaning "to present information in a sensationalist manner to reach a foregone conclusion". In reply to this, Noam Chomsky stated that the reason why journalists have invented the terms 'to pilger' and 'pilgerise' is because, when faced with the uncomfortable facts about the consequences of U.S foreign policy that Pilger presents, "ridicule [is] the only response they are capable of".

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Gerard Henderson is one of Pilger's most vocal critics and has accused him in effect of being a conspiracy theorist.

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."

Career summary

• 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 – 66 Reporter, sub-editor, feature writer and Chief Foreign Correspondent - Daily Mirror
• 1969 – 71 Reporter, World in Action, Granada Television
• 1974 – 81 Reporter/Producer, ATV
• 1981 – Documentary film-maker, Central and Carlton Television
• 1987 – titular Editor-in-Chief but resigned before publication and a founder of News on Sunday, London

Works

Publications

Pilger has written for or had articles published in the following publications:

• Daily Mirror (UK)
• The Guardian (UK)
• Mail & Guardian (South Africa)
• The Independent (UK)
• The Morning Star (UK)
• New Statesman (UK)
• Bulb magazine (UK)
• The New York Times (US)
• The Los Angeles Times (US)
• The Nation: New York (US)
• The Age: Melbourne (Australia)
• The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
• The Bulletin: Sydney (Australia)
• Green Left Weekly (Australia)

He has also written for various French, Italian, Scandinavian, Canadian and Japanese newspapers and periodicals, among others, and has contributed to the BBC's news service. He is on the advisory board of UKWatch.

Selected documentaries

• Vietnam-The Quiet Mutiny 1971
• Do You Remember Vietnam 1978
• Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia 1979 Video
• The Mexicans 1980
• Burp! Pepsi V Coke in the Ice Cold War 1982
• Nicaragua. A Nations Right to Survive 1983 Video
• 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 Video
• Flying the Flag, Arming the World 1994 Video
• Vietnam: the Last Battle 1995
• Inside Burma: Land of Fear 1996 Video
• Breaking the Mirror - The Murdoch Effect 1997
• Apartheid Did Not Die 1998 Video
• Welcome To Australia 1999
• Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq 2000 Video
• The New Rulers of the World 2001-2002 Video
• Palestine Is Still the Issue 2002 Video
• Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror 2003 Video
• Stealing a Nation 2004
• The War on Democracy 2007 Video

DVDs

• In The Name of Justice - 18/06/07
• Documentaries That Changed The World - 11/9/06
• World In Action Vol. 1 - features The Quiet Mutiny 31/10/05

Books by Pilger

• 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)
• Blowin' in the wind (2004)
• Freedom Next Time (2006)

Play

• The Last Day (1983)

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)

Degrees and honorary degrees:

• Hon. D. Litt. (Staffordshire)
• D. Phil. (Dublin City)
• D. Arts (Oxford Brooks and Kingston)
• Hon. LL.D. (St Andrews)
• DUniv (Open University, UK)
• Edward Wilson Fellow, Deakin University (Australia)
• Visiting Professor, Cornell University, USA

Quotes

• "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."
• "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."
• "During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places."
• (Referring to the September 11, 2001 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."

Footnotes

References

• The films and journalism of John Pilger
• John Pilger at ZNet
• John Pilger at New Statesman
• John Pilger at CiF
• John Pilger at IMDb
• John Pilger at Google Video
• BFI interview John Pilger in conversation
• Arnold, John & Morris, Diedre (1994): Monash Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Australia, Reed Reference Publishing, ISBN 978-1875589197.
• Who's Who in Australia 2008 - p. 1701.
• Hayward, Anthony (2002). In the Name of Justice: The Television Reporting of John Pilger. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; New Ed edition. ISBN 0747558981.

External links

• 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:
• "Resisting the Empire": Documentary Filmmaker John Pilger on Struggles for Freedom in Israel-Palestine, Diego Garcia, Latin America and South Africa, Democracy Now!, June 7, 2007,
  Listen and Watch:
• John Pilger, The lies of Hiroshima live on, props in the war crimes of the 20th century, The Guardian, August 6, 2008,
• John Pilger at Random House Australia