John Pilger’s Reporting Demolished Western Propaganda’s Myths
John Pilger, who died on December 30, had an extraordinary career as a reporter. His journalism informed countless people about the catastrophic impact of US foreign policy during and after the Cold War, from Vietnam and Cambodia to Nicaragua and East Timor.
Investigative journalist John Pilger at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2007. (Colin McPherson / Getty Images)
There have already been some fine tributes to the Australian journalist John Pilger, who died on December 30 at the age of eighty-four, giving an overview of his career. What I want to do here is offer a more personal perspective on the impact of his work. Pilger’s print and broadcast journalism had a very wide distribution over the course of several decades, so my experience of engaging with his work is probably one that many people have shared.
During the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, Pilger was a foreign correspondent for the Daily Mirror, a mass-circulation tabloid with several million readers. He also produced a series of television documentaries that reached a mass audience in Britain.
By the time I was old enough to encounter his journalism, in the late 1990s, Pilger no longer worked for the Mirror, although he still contributed articles to publications like the Guardian and the New Statesman. His appearances on TV were also becoming rarer, so my first point of contact came through his books.
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