John Pilger | |
|---|---|
 Pilger in 2011 | |
| Born | (1939-10-09)9 October 1939 Bondi, New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 30 December 2023(2023-12-30) (aged 84) London, England |
| Education | Sydney Boys High School |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse | Scarth Flett (divorced) |
| Partner | Jane Hill |
| Children | 2, includingZoe |
| Awards | Full list |
| Website | Official website |
John Richard Pilger (/ˈpɪldʒər/; 9 October 1939 – 30 December 2023) was an Australian journalist, writer, scholar and documentary filmmaker.[1] From 1962, he was based mainly in Britain.[2][3][4] He was also a visiting professor atCornell University in New York.[5]
Pilger was a critic ofAmerican,Australian, andBritish foreign policy, which he considered to be driven by animperialist andcolonialist agenda. He criticised his native country's treatment ofIndigenous Australians. He first drew international attention for his reports on theCambodian genocide.[6]
Pilger's career as a documentary filmmaker began withThe Quiet Mutiny (1970), made during one of his visits to Vietnam, and continued with over 50 documentaries thereafter. Other works in this form includeYear Zero (1979), about the aftermath of thePol Pot regime in Cambodia, andDeath of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy (1993). His many documentary films on indigenous Australians includeThe Secret Country (1985) andUtopia (2013). In the British print media, Pilger worked at theDaily Mirror from 1963 to 1986,[7] and wrote a regular column for theNew Statesman magazine from 1991 to 2014.
Pilger won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award in 1967 and 1979.[8] His documentaries have gained awards in Britain and abroad,[7] including aBAFTA.[9] He came fourth in a poll of 50 heroes of all time by the New Statesman in May 2006.[10][11]
John Richard Pilger was born on 9 October 1939[12][13] inBondi, New South Wales,[7] the son of Claude and Elsie Pilger. His older brother, Graham (1932–2017), was a disabled rights activist who later advised the government ofGough Whitlam.[14] Pilger was of German descent on his father's side,[15] while his mother had English, German and Irish ancestry; two of his maternal great-great-grandparents were Irish convicts transported to Australia.[16][17][18] His mother taught French in school.[16]
Pilger and his brother attendedSydney Boys High School,[7][14] where he began a student newspaper,The Messenger. He later joined a four-year journalist trainee scheme with theAustralian Consolidated Press.[7]
Beginning his career in 1958 as a copy boy with theSydney Sun, Pilger later moved toDaily Telegraph in Sydney, where he was a reporter, sportswriter and sub-editor.[7][19] He also freelanced and worked for the SydneySunday Telegraph, the daily paper's sister title. After moving to Europe, he was a freelance correspondent in Italy for a year.[20]
Settling in London in 1962 and working as a sub-editor, Pilger joined British United Press and thenReuters on its Middle-East desk.[20] In 1963, he was recruited by the EnglishDaily Mirror, again as a sub-editor.[20] Later, he advanced to become a reporter, a feature writer, and chief foreign correspondent for the title. While living and working in the United States for theDaily Mirror, on 5 June 1968 he witnessed theassassination of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles during his presidential campaign.[21] He was awar correspondent inVietnam,Cambodia,Bangladesh andBiafra. Nearly eighteen months afterRobert Maxwell bought theMirror (on 12 July 1984), Pilger was sacked byRichard Stott, the newspaper's editor, on 31 December 1985.[22] Pilger was banned from South Africa in 1967.[23]
Pilger was a founder of theNews on Sunday tabloid in 1984 and became its editor-in-chief in 1986.[24] During the period of hiring staff, Pilger was away for several months filmingThe Secret Country in Australia. Prior to this, he had given editor Keith Sutton a list of people who he thought might be recruited for the paper, but found on his return to Britain that none of them had been hired.[25]
Pilger, however, came into conflict with those around him. He disagreed with the founders' decision to base the paper in Manchester and then clashed with the governing committees; the paper was intended to be a workers' co-operative.[26][27] Sutton's appointment as editor was Pilger's suggestion, but he fell out with Sutton over his plan to produce a left-wingSun newspaper.[26] The two men ended up producing their own dummies, but the founders and the various committees backed Sutton.[26] Pilger, appointed with "overall editorial control",[24] resigned at this point before the first issue appeared.[28] The first issue appeared on 27 April 1987 andThe News on Sunday soon closed.
Pilger returned to theMirror in 2001 after the9/11 attacks, whilePiers Morgan was editor.[29] In discussing why he left the paper after only being there for 18 months, he told Ian Burrell of the Independent in 2008: "It was a very rewarding 18 months," he says. "I was happy to keep on writing for the Mirror, but Piers was under pressure from the management and American shareholders who objected to the kind of journalism that he was publishing, often written by me. It was a myth that the readers didn't want a serious approach to journalism in a popular newspaper.""[30]
His most frequent outlet for many years was theNew Statesman, where he had a fortnightly column from 1991 whenSteve Platt was editor to 2014.[31][32] In 2018, Pilger said his "written journalism is no longer welcome" in the mainstream and that "probably its last home" was inThe Guardian. His last column forThe Guardian was in November 2019.[32]
With the actorDavid Swift, and the film makersPaul Watson andCharles Denton, Pilger formed Tempest Films in 1969. "We wanted a frontman with a mind of his own, rather like anotherJames Cameron, with whomRichard [Marquand] had worked", Swift once said. "Paul thought John was very charismatic, as well as marketing extremely original, refreshingly radical ideas." The company was unable to gain commissions from either the BBC orITV, but did manage to package potential projects.[33]
Pilger's career on television began onWorld in Action (Granada Television) in 1969, directed by Denton, for whom he made two documentaries broadcast in 1970 and 1971, the earliest of more than fifty in his career.The Quiet Mutiny (1970) was filmed at Camp Snuffy, presenting a character study of the common US soldier during theVietnam War. It revealed the shiftingmorale and open rebellion of American troops. Pilger later described the film as "something of a scoop" – it was the first documentary to show the problems with morale among the drafted ranks of the US military. In an interview with theNew Statesman, Pilger said:
When I flew to New York and showed it toMike Wallace, the star reporter ofCBS'60 Minutes, he agreed. "Real shame we can't show it here".[34]
He made other documentaries about the United States involvement in Vietnam, includingVietnam: Still America's War (1974),Do You Remember Vietnam? (1978), andVietnam: The Last Battle (1995).
During his work with BBC'sMidweek television series during 1972–73,[35] Pilger completed five documentary reports, but only two were broadcast.
Pilger was successful in gaining a regular television outlet atATV. ThePilger half-hour documentary series was commissioned byCharles Denton, then a producer with ATV, for screening on the British ITV network. The series ran for five seasons from 1974 until 1977,[35] at first running in the UK on Sunday afternoons afterWeekend World. The theme song for the series was composed byLynsey de Paul.[36] Later the program was scheduled in a weekday peak-time evening slot. The last series included "A Faraway Country" (September 1977) about dissidents inCzechoslovakia, then still part of the Communist Soviet bloc. Pilger and his team interviewed members ofCharter 77 and other groups, clandestinely using domestic film equipment. In the documentary Pilger praises the dissidents' courage and commitment to freedom and describes the communist totalitarianism as "fascism disguised as socialism".[37]
Pilger was later given an hour slot at 9 pm, beforeNews at Ten, which gave him a high profile in Britain. After ATV lost its franchise in 1981, he continued to make documentaries for screening on ITV, initially forCentral, and later viaCarlton Television.
In 1979, Pilger and two colleagues with whom he collaborated for many years, documentary filmmakerDavid Munro and photographer Eric Piper, enteredCambodia in the wake of the overthrow of thePol Pot regime. They made photographs and reports that were world exclusives. The first was published as a special issue of theDaily Mirror, which sold out. They also produced an ITV documentary,Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia.[38] Whilst filming 'Cambodia: Year One" Pilger was placed on a 'death list' by the Khmer Rouge.[39]
Following the showing ofYear Zero, some $45 million was raised, unsolicited, in mostly small donations, including almost £4 million raised by schoolchildren in the UK. This funded the first substantial relief to Cambodia, including the shipment of life-saving drugs such as penicillin, and clothing to replace the black uniforms people had been forced to wear. According to Brian Walker, director ofOxfam, "a solidarity and compassion surged across our nation" from the broadcast ofYear Zero.[40]
William Shawcross wrote in his bookThe Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience (1984) about Pilger's series of articles about Cambodia in theDaily Mirror during August 1979:
A rather interesting quality of the articles was their concentration on Nazism and the holocaust. Pilger called Pol Pot 'an Asian Hitler' — and said he was even worse than Hitler . . . Again and again Pilger compared the Khmer Rouge to the Nazis. Their Marxist-Leninist ideology was not even mentioned in theMirror, except to say they were inspired by the Red Guards. Their intellectual origins were described as 'anarchist' rather than Communist".[41]
Ben Kiernan, in his review of Shawcross's book, notes that Pilger did compare Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge toStalin's terror, as well as toMao'sRed Guards. Kiernan notes instances where other writers' comparisons of Pol Pot to Hitler or the Vietnamese to the Nazis are either accepted by Shawcross in his account, or not mentioned.[42]
Shawcross wrote inThe Quality of Mercy that "Pilger's reports underwrote almost everything that refugees along the Thai border had been saying about the cruelty of Khmer Rouge rule since 1975, and that had already appeared in the books by theReader's Digest and François Ponchaud. InHeroes, Pilger disputesFrançois Ponchaud and Shawcross's account of Vietnamese atrocities duringthe Vietnamese invasion and near famine as being "unsubstantiated".[43] Ponchaud had interviewed members of anti-communist groups living in the Thai refugee border camps. According to Pilger, "At the very least the effect of Shawcross's 'exposé'" of Cambodians' treatment at the hands of the Vietnamese "was to blur the difference between Cambodia under Pol Pot and Cambodia liberated by the Vietnamese: in truth, a difference of night and day".[43] In his book, Shawcross himself doubted that anyone had died of starvation.[42]
Pilger and Munro made four later films about Cambodia. Pilger's documentaryCambodia – The Betrayal (1990), prompted a libel case against him, which was settled at theHigh Court with an award against Pilger and Central Television.The Times of 6 July 1991 reported:
Two men who claimed that a television documentary accused them of beingSAS members who trained Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge to lay mines, accepted "very substantial" libel damages in the High Court yesterday. Christopher Geidt and Anthony De Normann settled their action against the journalist John Pilger and Central Television on the third day of the hearing. Desmond Browne, QC, for Mr Pilger and Central Television, said his clients had not intended to allege the two men trained the Khmer Rouge to lay mines, but they accepted that was how the program had been understood.[44]
Pilger said the defence case collapsed because the government issued a gagging order, citing national security, which prevented three government ministers and two former heads of theSAS from appearing in court.[45] The film received a British Academy of Film and Television Award nomination in 1991.[46]
In 1982 Pilger authored an article for theDaily Mirror in which he wrote that he had bought an 8-year-old Thai slave girl for £85, and subsequently to have discovered her village of origin in Northern Thailand and returned her to her mother, with Pilger pledging money to support the girl's education. This story was subsequently cast into doubt by an investigation in theFar Eastern Economic Review (FEER) which uncovered that the girl and her mother had been paid to play their respective parts by a fixer working for Pilger. Pilger accused those involved at FEER of being CIA agents[citation needed]. An article by the right-wing journalistAuberon Waugh toThe Spectator cast further doubt on the story. Pilger threatenedThe Spectator with an action for libel. In responding toThe Bulletin's coverage of the issue Pilger wrote the following on 17 August 1982:
I Do Not Believe I was Hoaxed
"I AM sorry The Bulletin published an article about me (August 3) without seeking my side of the story. The writer, Robert Darroch, quoted me but I never spoke to him: a salutary experience for a journalist such as myself. I appreciate the opportunity to make the following facts clear. I am suing The Spectator and its writer, Auberon Waugh, for one reason and one reason only: that in the June 12 issue Waugh gave approval and credibility to a totally untrue and bogus tale from Bangkok that I, together with the author of a United Nations report on child slavery in Thailand, a photographer and a Thai human rights official, somehow “set up” the buying of a child..."[47]
Pilger went on in his letter to point out that he wasn't in Thailand on the month it was alleged to have occurred.[48] The matter was settled out of court without any payment to Pilger.[49][50]
Pilger long criticised aspects of Australian government policy, particularly what he regarded as its inherent racism resulting in the poor treatment ofIndigenous Australians. In 1969, Pilger went with Australian activistCharlie Perkins on a tour to Jay Creek in Central Australia. He compared what he witnessed in Jay Creek to South African apartheid.[51] He saw the appalling conditions that theAboriginal people were living under, with children suffering from malnutrition and grieving mothers and grandmothers having had their lighter-skinned children and grandchildren removed by the police and welfare agencies. Equally, he learned of Aboriginal boys being sent to work on white-run farms, and Aboriginal girls working as servants in middle-class homes as undeclared slave labour.[52]
Pilger made several documentaries about Indigenous Australians, such asThe Secret Country: The First Australians Fight Back (1985) andWelcome to Australia (1999). His book on the subject,A Secret Country, was first published in 1989. Pilger wrote in 2000 that the 1998 legislation that removed the common-law rights of Indigenous peoples:
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.[53]
Pilger returned to this subject withUtopia, released in 2013 (see below).
InEast Timor Pilger clandestinely shotDeath of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy about the brutalIndonesian occupation of East Timor, which began in 1975.
Death of a Nation contributed to an international outcry which ultimately led to Indonesian withdrawal fromEast Timor and eventual independence in 2000. WhenDeath of a Nation was screened in Britain it was the highest rating documentary in 15 years and 5,000 telephone calls per minute were made to the programme's action line.[54] WhenDeath of a Nation was screened in Australia in June 1994, Foreign MinisterGareth Evans declared that Pilger "had a track record of distortedsensationalism mixed with sanctimony."[55]
Pilger's documentaryPalestine Is Still the Issue was released in 2002 and hadIlan Pappé as historical adviser. Pilger said the film describes how an "historic injustice has been done to the Palestinian people, and until Israel's illegal and brutal occupation ends, there will be no peace for anyone, Israelis included". He said the responses of his interviewees "put the lie to the standard Zionist cry that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic, a claim that insults all those Jewish people who reject the likes ofAriel Sharon acting in their name".[56] Its broadcast resulted in complaints by the Israeli embassy, theBoard of Deputies of British Jews, and theConservative Friends of Israel that it was inaccurate and biased.[57]Michael Green, chairman ofCarlton Communications, the company that made the film, also objected to it in an interview withThe Jewish Chronicle.[58][59]
The UK television regulator, theIndependent Television Commission (ITC), ordered an investigation. The ITC investigation rejected the complaints about the film, stating in its report:
The ITC raised with Carlton all the significant areas of inaccuracy critics of the programme alleged and the broadcaster answered them by reference to a range of historical texts. The ITC is not a tribunal of fact and is particularly aware of the difficulties of verifying 'historical fact' but the comprehensiveness and authority of Carlton's sources were persuasive, not least because many appeared to be of Israeli origin.[60]
The ITC concluded that in Pilger's documentary "adequate opportunity was given to a pro-Israeli government perspective" and that the programme "was not in breach of the ITC Programme Code".[60][61]
Pilger's documentaryStealing a Nation (2004) recounts theexpulsion of theChagossians by Britain and the USA between 1967 and 1973 so that the US could construct a military base on their former land. The poor economic situation faced by the Chagossians inMauritius as a result of the deportation is described in the film. After the expulsion, theUnited States government leasedDiego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos Islands, from Britain and constructed a major military base there. In the 21st century, the US used the base for planes which were bombing targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a 2000 ruling on the events, theInternational Court of Justice described the wholesale removal of the Chagossian peoples from the Chagos Islands by Britain as "acrime against humanity". Pilger strongly criticisedTony Blair for failing to respond in a substantive way to the 2000High Court ruling that the expulsion of theChagossian people to Mauritius was illegal.
In March 2005,Stealing a Nation received theRoyal Television Society Award.
The documentaryThe War on Democracy (2007) was Pilger's first film to be released in the cinema. In "an unremitting assault on American foreign policy since 1945", according toAndrew Billen inThe Times, the film explores the role of US interventions, overt and covert, in toppling a series of governments in the region, and placing "a succession of favourably disposed bullies in control of its Latino backyard".[62] It discusses the US role in theoverthrow in 1973 of the democratically elected Chilean leaderSalvador Allende, who was replaced by the military dictatorship ofGeneral Augusto Pinochet. Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic governments in South America. It also contains whatPeter Bradshaw inThe Guardian described as "a dewy-eyed interview" with PresidentHugo Chávez of Venezuela, which has moments of "almostHello!-magazine deference".[63]
Pilger explores the US ArmySchool of the Americas in the US state of Georgia. Generations of South American military were trained there, with a curriculum includingcounter-insurgency techniques. Attendees reportedly included members of Pinochet's security services, along with men fromHaiti,El Salvador,Argentina and Brazil who have been implicated in human rights abuses.
The film also details theattempted overthrow of Venezuela's PresidentHugo Chávez in 2002, and the response of the people ofCaracas. It looks at the wider rise of populist governments across South America, led by figures calling for loosening ties with the United States and attempting a more equitable redistribution of the continent's natural wealth. Of "Chávez's decision to bypass the National Assembly for 18 months, and rule by decree", Peter Bradshaw writes "Pilger passes over it very lightly".[63]
Pilger said the film is about 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.[64]
The War on Democracy won the Best Documentary category at theOne World Media Awards in 2008.[65]
The subject ofThe War You Don't See is the role of the media in making war. It concentrates on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. It begins with theCollateral Murder video leaked byChelsea Manning and released byWikiLeaks. In an interview, Julian Assange describes WikiLeaks as an organisation that gives power to 'conscientious objectors' within 'power systems'. The documentary contends that the media far from acting as the fourth estate – instead uncritically reports the official line and spin from governments and in turn delivers propaganda over journalism. During the documentary Pilger states that "propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home".[66][67][68][69][70]
In its review, Time Out magazine said: "This wonderfully researched and outraged film gathers and presents the case for the prosecution. In a world of embedded reporters, sophisticated spin and governmental evasion, what price investigative journalism?"[71]
For Christopher Czechowicz of theFrontline Club: "Perhaps what’s most important about this film is its simple message. For John Pilger, the mainstream Fourth Estate is not doing its job properly. Whereas independent journalists are able to articulate the truth in a sophisticated manner, mainstream sources remain disinterested in their work. Time and again, they prefer baseless information, sound bytes and sensational footage of clamoring crowds that rouse emotion to the hard tasks journalists must perform. In Pilger’s final remarks in the film, what remains clear is that more than ever, uncompromised, brave journalism is needed in our world, always challenging the official story, in his words, “however patriotic it appears, or however seductive or insidious it is.”[72]
When interviewed about the film onAl Jazeera'sThe Listening Post he was asked that the media could in fact prevent war, Pilger replied that in his own view that the media could in fact stop a war from occurring.[73][74]
Having been criticised directly in the documentary, with Pilger interviewingFran Unsworth, the then BBC Head of Newsgathering about its war coverage. The former BBC World News editor, Jon Williams responded to the charge of embedded journalism no longer being objective with the following: "But "embedding" does have real value. There are 9,500 British troops in Afghanistan - and more than 100,000 US service personnel. Theirs is an important perspective, and their operations an important part of the story. The security situation means, sometimes, it is only possible to travel to certain parts of the country as part of a military "embed"."[75]
John Lloyd in theFinancial Times saidThe War You Don't See was a "one-sided" documentary which "had no thought of explaining, even hinting, that the wars fought by the US and the UK had a scrap of just cause, nor of examining the nature of what Pilger simply stated were "lies" – especially those that took the two countries to the invasion of Iraq".[76]
WithUtopia, Pilger returned to the experiences of Indigenous Australians and what he termed "the denigrating of their humanity".[77] A documentary feature film, it takes its title fromUtopia, an Aboriginalhomeland (also known as an outstation)[78] in theNorthern Territory.[79] Pilger says that "in essence, very little" has changed since the first of his seven films about the Aboriginal people,A Secret Country: The First Australians (1985).[80] In an interview with the UK basedAustralian Times he commented: "the catastrophe imposed on Indigenous Australians is the equivalent of apartheid, and the system has to change".[81]
Reviewing the film,Peter Bradshaw wrote: "The awful truth is that Indigenous communities are on mineral-rich lands that cause mouths to water in mining corporation boardrooms".[82] "When the subject and subjects are allowed to speak for themselves – when Pilger doesn't stand and preach – the injustices glow like throbbing wounds", wroteNigel Andrews in theFinancial Times, but the documentary maker "goes on too long. 110 minutes is a hefty time in screen politics, especially when we know the makers' message from scene one".[83]
Geoffrey Macnab described it as an "angry, impassioned documentary"[77] while forMark Kermode it is a "searing indictment of the ongoing mistreatment" of the first Australians.[84]
The Coming War on China was Pilger's 60th film for ITV.[85]
The film premiered in the UK on Thursday 1 December 2016,[86] and was shown on ITV at 10.40 pm on Tuesday 6 December and on the Australian public broadcasterSBS on 16 April 2017.[87] In the documentary, according to Pilger, "the evidence and witnesses warn that nuclear war is no longer a shadow, but a contingency. The greatest build-up of American-led military forces since the Second World War is well under way. They are on the western borders of Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, confronting China. Like the renewal of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China as an economic power is declared an 'existential threat' to the divine right of the United States to rule and dominate human affairs".[88]
"The first third told, and told well, the unforgivable, unconscionable tale of what has overtaken the Marshall Islanders since 1946, when the US first nuked the test site on Bikini Atoll" beginning anextended series of tests, wrote Euan Ferguson inThe Observer. "Over the next 12 years they would unleash a total of 42.2 megatons. The islanders, as forensically proved by Pilger, were effectively guinea pigs for [the] effects of radiation".[89] Ferguson wrote that the rest of the film "was a sane, sober, necessary, deeply troubling bucketful of worries".[89]Peter Bradshaw inThe Guardian wrote that the film "lays bare the historical horrors of the US military in the Pacific, exposing the paranoia and pre-emptive aggression of its semi-secret bases," adding: "This is a gripping film, which though it comes close to excusing China ... does point out China's insecurities and political cruelties".[90] Neil Young ofThe Hollywood Reporter called the film an "authoritative indictment of American nefariousness in the western Pacific".[91]
Kevin Maher wrote inThe Times that he admired the early sequences on the Marshall Islands, but that he believed the film lacked nuance or subtlety. Maher wrote that, for Pilger, China is "a brilliant place with just some 'issues with human rights', but let's not go into that now".[92]Diplomat columnist David Hutt said "Pilger consistently glosses over China's past crimes while dwelling on America's".[93]
Pilger'sThe Dirty War on the National Health Service was released in the UK on 29 November 2019 and examined the changes that theNHS had undergone since its founding in 1948. Pilger makes the case that governments beginning with that of Margaret Thatcher have waged a secret war against the NHS with a view to privatising it slowly and surreptitiously. Pilger predicted that moves toward privatisation would create more poverty and homelessness and that the resulting chaos would be used as an argument for further "reform". Prior to the2019 United Kingdom general election, ITV were embargoed from publicising the documentary (as the election was on the 12th of December 2019). It was later broadcast on 17 December 2019.[94] It was also referenced in a 2020 essay in The Nation magazine, "How to Destroy a National Health Service".[95]
Peter Bradshaw described the documentary as a "fierce, necessary film".[96] Emma Simmonds of the Radio Times said: "Pilger is a constant, typically authoritative, slightly doom-laden presence."[97]
Writing for the New Matilda in 2020: "Today, Australia is a vassal state bar none: its politics, intelligence agencies, military and much of its media are integrated into Washington’s “sphere of dominance” and war plans. In Donald Trump's current provocations of China, the US bases in Australia are described as the “tip of the spear”.[98]
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In 2003 and 2004, Pilger criticised United States PresidentGeorge W. Bush, saying that he had used the9/11 terrorist attacks as an excuse toinvade Iraq as part of a strategy to increase US control of the world's oil supplies.[99][100] In 2004, Pilger criticised British Prime MinisterTony Blair as equally responsible for the invasion and the bungledoccupation of Iraq.[101] In 2004, as the Iraq insurgency increased, Pilger wrote that the anti-war movement should support "Iraq's anti-occupation resistance:
We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support theresistance, for if the resistance fails, the "Bush gang" will attack another country".[102]
Pilger described Australian Prime MinisterJohn Howard as "the mouse that roars for America, whipping his country into war fever and paranoia about terrorism within". He thought Howard's willingness to "join the Bush/Blair assault on Iraq ... evok[ed] a melancholy history of obsequious service to great power: from theBoxer Rebellion to theBoer war, to thedisaster at Gallipoli, andKorea,Vietnam and theGulf".[103]
On 25 July 2005, Pilger ascribed blame for the2005 London bombings that month to Blair. He wrote that Blair's decision to follow Bush helped to generate the rage that Pilger said precipitated the bombings.[104]
In his column a year later, Pilger described Blair as awar criminal for supporting Israel's actions during the2006 Israel–Lebanon conflict. He said that Blair gave permission to Israeli Prime MinisterAriel Sharon in 2001 to initiate what would ultimately becomeOperation Defensive Shield.[105]
In 2014, Pilger wrote that "The truth about the criminal bloodbath in Iraq cannot be "countered" indefinitely. Neither can the truth about our support for the medievalists inSaudi Arabia, the nuclear-armed predators in Israel, the new military fascists inEgypt and the jihadist "liberators" of Syria, whose propaganda is now BBC news".[106]
Pilger criticisedBarack Obama during his presidential campaign of 2008, saying that he was "a glossyUncle Tom who would bombPakistan"[107] and his theme "was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully". After Obama was elected and took office in 2009, Pilger wrote, "In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposedhabeas corpus and demanded more secret government".[108]
Sunny Hundal wrote inThe Guardian during November 2008 that the "Uncle Tom" comment used against Obama "highlights a patronising attitude towards ethnic minorities. Pilger expects all black and brown people to be revolutionary brothers and sisters, and if they veer away from that stereotype, it can only be because they are pawns of a wider conspiracy".[109]
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Pilger supportedJulian Assange by pledgingbail in December 2010. Pilger said at the time: "There's no doubt that he is not going to abscond".[110] Assange sought asylum in theEmbassy of Ecuador in London in 2012 and Pilger's bail money was lost when a judge ordered it to be forfeited.[69]
Pilger had been critical of the media's treatment of Assange saying: "The same brave newspapers and broadcasters that have supported Britain's part in epic bloody crimes, from thegenocide in Indonesia to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, now attack the "human rights record" of Ecuador, whose real crime is to stand up to the bullies in London and Washington".[111]
He criticised the failure of the Australian government to object when it "repeatedly received confirmation that the US was conducting an 'unprecedented' pursuit of Assange" and noted that one of the reasons Ecuador gave for granting asylum to Assange was his abandonment by Australia.[111]
Pilger visited Assange in the embassy and continued to support him.[111]
In a February 2016 webchat on the website ofThe Guardian newspaper, Pilger said "Trump is speaking straight to ordinary Americans". Although his opinions about immigration were "gross", Pilger wrote that they are "no more gross in essence than, say,David Cameron's – he is not planning to invade anywhere, he doesn't hate the Russians or the Chinese, he is not beholden to Israel. People like this lack of cant, and when the so-called liberal media deride him, they like him even more".[112] In March 2016, Pilger commented in a speech delivered at theUniversity of Sydney during the2016 United States presidential election, thatDonald Trump was a less dangerous potential President of the United States thanHillary Clinton.[113]
In November 2016, Pilger said that "notorious terrorist jihadist group calledISIL or ISIS is created largely with money from [the government ofSaudi and the government of Qatar] who are giving money to theClinton Foundation".[114]
In August 2017, in an article published on his website, Pilger wrote that a "coup against the man in the White House is under way. This is not because he is an odious human being, but because he has consistently made clear he does not want war with Russia. This glimpse of sanity, or simple pragmatism, is anathema to the 'national security' managers who guard a system based on war, surveillance, armaments, threats and extremecapitalism". According to Pilger,The Guardian had published "drivel" in covering the claims "that theRussians conspired with Trump". Such assertions, he wrote, are "reminiscent of the far-right smearing ofJohn Kennedy as a 'Soviet agent'".[115]
With the absence of a Russian "invasion" a bitter disappointment to its most avid promoters in London, this expose ofOperation Orbital, the British army's secretive role in Ukraine, is recommended.
Pilger was a member ofCommittee of Supporters for the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award.[117] He had chosenAnna Politkovskaya's work to a book edited by him,Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism And Its Triumphs (2004).[118] Pilger also signed a petition demanding an international commission of inquiry to discover the truth behindPolitkovskaya's murder.[119]
In an article inThe Guardian, John Pilger wrote in May 2014 thatVladimir Putin "is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe".[120] HistorianTimothy Snyder assessed this statement as inaccurate since Russia at the time had organized meetings of European fascists and was subsidizing France's far Right party, theNational Rally, until 2018 known as theNational Front.[121] Pilger quoted in the article a Jewish doctor who had tried to rescue people from the burning trade union building during the2014 Odesa clashes, and was stopped by Ukrainian Nazis with the threat that this fate would soon befall him and other Jews and that what happened yesterday would not have happened even during thefascist occupation in World War II. This claim was factually false, as several tens of thousands of Jews weremurdered in three days in October 1941. It turned out that the man's quote came from a Facebook page that had been identified as a fake before the article was published.[122][123]
On thepoisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal on 4 March 2018, Pilger said in an interview on Russia'sRT: "This is a carefully constructed drama as part of the propaganda campaign that has been building now for several years in order to justify the actions ofNATO, Britain and the United States, towards Russia. That's a fact". Such events as theIraq War, "at the very least should make us sceptical ofTheresa May's theatrics in Parliament". He hinted that the UK government may have been involved in the attack, saying it had motive and that the nearbyPorton Down laboratory has a "long and sinister record with nerve gas and chemical weapons".[124]
In January 2022, Pilger repeatedly denied thatRussia was about to invade Ukraine, doing so even three days before the invasion.[125] Following the start of the invasion, Pilger condemned Russia's actions, but stated that they were due tothe enlargement of NATO towards Russia.[126]
Since being invited to open theUniversity of Lincoln's journalism school in 2004,[127] Pilger told the packed room at its launch that "Too often courses are like factories churning out conformist journalists for the industry. They tend to promote a ‘top-down’ kind of journalism which prioritises elite sources. Too rarely do they promote journalism that prioritises the views of ‘ordinary’ people. From my experience these are the people I can trust the most.”[128]
Pilger disagreed with the termmainstream media in 2009 lecture to students at the University of Lincoln: "He disputed the label of “mainstream”, preferring to label it “corporate”, as the most prominent media outlets are often controlled by large corporations. “Those whose journalism is meant for the most people are the mainstream.”"[129]
In conversation withCharles Glass at theFrontline club in 2012, Pilger commented that:
“Journalism students should be taught to be sceptical of their employers, sceptical of their governments. Governments are still portrayed as benign if they’re ours, and if they’re other’s, they’re not.”
“Media is an extension of power but when we recognise that we become aware of official drivel and understand that the truth is subversive. It always is."[130][131]
Writing for Arena Online in 2022, Pilger said: "When will we allow ourselves to understand? Training journalists factory style is not the answer. Neither is the wondrous digital tool, which is a means, not an end, like the one-finger typewriter and the linotype machine.
In recent years, some of the best journalists have been eased out of the mainstream. ‘Defenestrated’ is the word used. The spaces once open to mavericks, to journalists who went against the grain, truth-tellers, have closed."[132]
In an interview with the Independent's Rob Brown in 1998 he noted the difficulty journalism students had in securing work: "You say lots of allegedly wise things to students and at the end they invariably ask the same question: 'How do we get a job?' That's a big pressure on young people. It's made the true maverick in journalism an endangered species. People simply cannot afford to be mavericks any more."[23]
Remarking in an interview with Ian Burrell of the Independent in 2008 that "...many start œwith the same passion I started with" and implores them to "keep your principles as you navigate the system". His watchword remains, 'Never believe anything until it's officially denied,' a favourite expression of reporterClaud Cockburn, father of Independent journalistPatrick Cockburn.[30]
In 2008, in an interview with Ian Burrell of the Independent, Pilger remarked: ""The influence of The Independent and Guardian are much greater than you would think. I don't believe the majority of people in Britain have the so-called values of The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail and certainly not The Sun. That doesn’t mean to say they flock to read the Guardian and the Independent, clearly they don’t. But on occasion, these newspapers speak up and gesture towards people, or they pretend to. Without them there would be an entirely closed media.”[30]
He disagreed with the concept of mainstream media, telling an audience at the University of Lincoln in 2009:
"I think the public is beginning to see the corporate media as a system of propaganda, a monoculture whose differences — rather like party politics — are illusory.”"[129]
Pilger criticised many journalists of the corporate media. During the administration of PresidentBill Clinton in the US, Pilger attacked theBritish-American Project as an example of "Atlanticistfreemasonry". He asserted in November 1998 that "many members are journalists, the essential foot soldiers in any network devoted to power and propaganda".[133] In 2002, he said that "many journalists now are no more than channellers and echoers of whatOrwell called the official truth".[134]
Also in 2003, he criticised what he called the "liberal lobby" which "promote killing" from "behind a humanitarian mask". He saidDavid Aaronovitch exemplified the "mask-wearers" and noted that Aaronovitch had written that the attack on Iraq will be "the easy bit".[135] Aaronovitch responded to an article by Pilger about the mainstream media[136] in 2003 as one of his "typical pieces about the corruption of most journalists (ie people like me [Aaronovitch]) versus the bravery of a few (ie people like him)".[137]
In an address atColumbia University on 14 April 2006, Pilger said:
During theCold 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?'[138]
On another occasion, while speaking to journalism students at theUniversity of Lincoln, Pilger said that mainstream journalism means corporate journalism. As such, he believes it represents vested corporate interests more than those of the public.[139]
Pilger wrote in December 2002, of British broadcasting's requirement for "impartiality," as being "a euphemism for the consensual view of established authority".[140] He wrote that "BBC television news faithfully echoed word for word" government "propaganda designed to soften up the public for Blair's attack on Iraq".[140] In his documentaryThe War You Don't See (2010), Pilger returned to this theme and accused the BBC of failing to cover the viewpoint of the victims, civilians caught up in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.[141] He additionally pointed to the 48 documentaries on Ireland made for the BBC and ITV between 1959 and the late-1980s which were delayed or altered before transmission, or totally suppressed.[142]
Pilger was married to journalist Scarth Flett, granddaughter of the physician and geologistSir John Smith Flett.[143] Their son Sam[144] was born in 1973 and is a sports writer. Pilger also had a daughter,Zoe Pilger (who is an author and art critic),[145] born 1984, with journalistYvonne Roberts.[146][147]
Outside of news and current affairs, Pilger enjoyed cooking, surfing, TV and sport. His favourite book is Joseph Heller'sCatch-22 and his favourite song:Blue Moon Of Kentucky by Elvis Presley[148][149] Having appeared on Desert Island Discs on 18 Feb 1990, he revealed that his luxury item was a typewriter.[148]
Pilger died ofpulmonary fibrosis in London on 30 December 2023, at the age of 84; he is survived by Jane Hill, his partner for thirty years.[150][151]
The managing director of Media and Entertainment at ITV.Kevin Lygo, said "John was a giant of campaigning journalism. He had a clear, distinctive editorial voice which he used to great effect throughout his distinguished filmmaking career. His documentaries were engaging, challenging and always very watchable [...] He eschewed comfortable consensus and instead offered a radical, alternative approach on current affairs and a platform for dissenting voices over 50 years"[152][153]
A number of journalists paid tribute to Pilger upon his death, including the BBC's World Affairs EditorJohn Simpson,[154] formerChannel 4 News presenterJon Snow,[155] Solomon Hughes ofPrivate Eye,[156] and Ros Wynne-Jones of theDaily Mirror.[157]
The academic journal Ethical Space provided a number of tributes to Pilger,[158] in addition to being collated on his website.[159] The45th News and Documentary Emmy Awards also paid tribute in 2024 (at 1:44).[160] The BFI hosted the panel: The Pilger Effect: A celebration of the life and work of John Pilger.[161]
The Press Awards, formerly the British Press Awards:
Other awards:
Honours
A documentary filmmaker named John Pillinger appeared in anIron ManExtremiscomic book story written byWarren Ellis in January 2005. Pillinger interviews war profiteerTony Stark for his documentary filmThe Ghosts of the Twentieth Century.[180]
In Rap News 7, Revolution spreads to America byJuice Rap News, Pilger's impersonation employed his characteristics from his intonation, piece to camera and employed Pilgerist language from 'the war you don't see' to 'the two party system'.[181]
In 2008, he was awarded the Doctor of Arts by the University of Lincoln and opened its school of journalism in 2004.[182][127][179] In an interview with the Linc (the University of Lincoln's student newspaper) asked about how the award would be appreciated alongside his other awards, he replied: "Well, it’s already in pride of place on the wall of my office!"[183]
The John Pilger Archive is now housed at theBritish Library. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue.[184] It was launched and based at theUniversity of Lincoln from 2009 to 2017. The archive features his news reports, films and radio broadcasts and was digitised by former PhD student, now Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Dr Florian Zollmann.[185][186][187][188][189][190]
In an article for theNew Matilda, ABC Brisbane presenter, David Iliffe spoke to Chris Graham, the new Matilda editor and associate producer ofUtopia about John's legacy.[191]
The UK'sInformation Research Department (IRD), a department of theForeign Office, opened a file on Pilger in 1975. The file was passed to the Foreign Office's Special Production Unit when the IRD was shut down in 1977.[192]Declassified UK published an article on the declassified files, which showed he was under covert monitoring; commenting prior to his death Pilger remarked "My reporting, which was really exclusive, it was telling people something that they didn't know, it was exposing a great deal, it was exposing the tyrants, but it was also exposing who was backing the tyrants secretly – it’s rather embarrassing."[192]
In adopting his non-impartial stance,[193] Pilger often drew criticism from the political right who interpreted his work as controversial.The Guardian's obituary noted: "The ferocity of rightwing criticism of his views indicated the effectiveness of his journalism."[194]
As such Pilger was met with criticism from the right-wing journalistAuberon Waugh (whose own ethics with regard to journalism was noted by the Guardian in his obituary: "Once [Waugh] discovered the delights of the "freebie", he gave breathless accounts of his trips to the Orient, and the wonderful "Thai two-girl massage".)[195] Waugh went on to coin the verb "to Pilger" in reference to John Pilger, and its intended meaning was "presenting information in a sensationalist manner in support of a particular conclusion".[196]
In its obituary for Pilger, theDaily Telegraph, wrote that "many regarded Pilger as the finest crusading journalist of his generation. He did much to draw world attention to some of the most notorious human rights abuses of the late 20th century". It criticised his 1990 coverage of the Cambodian genocide for not identifying Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge as communists, and criticised his praise for the Vietnam-backed government of Hun Sen for not mentioning that Hun Sen was a former member of the Khmer Rouge.Noam Chomsky said that Pilger made people uncomfortable by exposing the awful reality of US foreign policy. The U.K. journalistWilliam Shawcross described Pilger as "dangerous to the causes which he claims to espouse".[196]
He was also met with criticism from the left with journalistOwen Jones responding to his criticism in CounterPunch[197] written in 2016[198]
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