Pilger, John Richard 1939-

PERSONAL:

Born October 9, 1939, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; son of Claude and Elsie Pilger; married twice; children: Sam, Zoe. Politics: "Yes." Religion: "None." Hobbies and other interests: "Swimming, sunning, and mulling."

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Journalist, documentary filmmaker, and playwright. Chief foreign correspondent for London Daily Mirror, 1963-85; filmmaker for Granada Television, 1969-72, Associated Television Ltd, 1974-81, and Central Television, 1981—, completing more than fifty documentary films, including Do You Remember Vietnam, 1978, Year Zero (with David Muno), 1979, The Last Dream, 1988, and War by Other Means, 1992.

AWARDS, HONORS:

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, 1980, UN Media Gold Medal, 1981, George Foster Peabody Award (US), 1990, Reporter Sans Frontières, 1990, Richard Dimbleby Award (BAFTA), 1991, Emmy Award, 1991, Sophie Prize for Human Rights (Norway), 2003, Royal Television Society Best Documentary, Stealing a Nation, 2004.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

The Last Day, Mirror, 1975, Vintage (New York, NY), 1976.

(With Anthony Barnett) Aftermath: The Struggle of Cambodia and Vietnam, New Statesman (London, England), 1982.

Heroes, J. Cape (London, England), 1986, South End Press (Cambridge, MA), 2001.

The Secret Country, J. Cape (London, England), 1989, also published as A Secret Country: The Hidden Australia, Knopf (New York, NY), 1991.

Distant Voices, Vintage (New York, NY), 1992.

Hidden Agendas, New Press (New York, NY), 1998.

In the Name of Justice: The Television Reporting of John Pilger, Bloomsbury (London, England), 2001.

Reporting the World: John Pilger's Great Eyewitness Photographers, 21 Publishing (London, England), 2001.

The New Rulers of the World, Verso (London, England), 2002.

(Editor) Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire, Nation Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Author of column in New Statesman and Society, 1991—. Contributor to periodicals, including the Guardian, Independent, and the New York Times.

FILMS

(With Charles Denton) The Quiet Mutiny, Associated Television, 1970.

(With David I. Munro) Do You Remember Vietnam?, Associated Television, 1978.

(With David I. Munro) Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia, Associated Television, 1979.

The Last Day (drama), British Broadcasting Corporation Television (BBC-TV), 1983.

(With Michael Coren) The Outsiders, Quartet in association with Channel Four Television Co. Ltd., 1985.

(With David I. Munro) Death of a Nation, Central Independent Television, 1994.

SIDELIGHTS:

John Richard Pilger is a prominent journalist and filmmaker who has been accorded acclaim and notoriety for both his books and his documentary films. He has covered a number of wars, including the Vietnam War for the London Daily Mirror. In 1976, he published The Last Day, an account of the Vietnam conflict with particular emphasis on the South Vietnamese government's final capitulation. Martha Gellhorn, herself a celebrated journalist, reported in New Statesman and Society that Pilger's depiction of the war was scorned by many critics; "They seemed to think the Vietnam war had been a good thing," Gellhorn declared. But the same reviewer proclaimed that Pilger's critics serve to "prove [his] continuous success," and she hailed the reporter as "a brave and invaluable witness to his time."

Among Pilger's other books is A Secret Country: The Hidden Australia (first published as The Secret Country in England). In this volume, the author depicts the Australian establishment as racially biased and politically corrupt, still yielding to the considerable pressures exerted by Great Britain and the United States. While the book also presents an admiring and affectionate portrait of other elements of Australia, it is Pilger's criticisms of his homeland that received attention from critics. New Statesman and Society reviewer Robert Carver reported that in A Secret Country Pilger provides "evidence of racism, corruption, philistinism and brutality."

In Distant Voices, published in 1992, Pilger presents a collection of essays on various topics, including politics, language, and the media. In describing the book, Pilger told CA that he was attempting to "break through the ‘consensual silence’ and pay tribute to dissenting voices seldom heard" in the mainstream media. Pilger has also made numerous documentary films. One motion picture achievement with David Muno, entitled Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia, exposes the brutal and oppressive nature of Cambodia's Pol Pot regime. Gellhorn, in her New Statesman and Society piece on Pilger, lauded: "I do not forget the documentaries I have seen and probably no one who saw it will ever forget the great film Year Zero."

Hidden Agendas, which was published in 1998, is a collection of essays and dispatches that Pilger has written from around the world. They chronicle long-term, slower-breaking stories as opposed to the sudden, event-driven news more commonly seen from these countries. He covers everything from the movement toward democracy in Burma to the struggles of the dock workers in Liverpool and the plight of people living in Shantytowns in South Africa. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly wrote of Pilger's efforts: "These essays pack a powerful punch, raising questions that his peers in the news trade can ill afford to ignore." A reviewer for New Internationalist commented of Pilger that "his books, articles and films shine a light into the corners that arms dealers, corporate overlords, hypocritical politicians and craven media propagandists would rather we didn't see. This is a wonderful, incisive book. Read it."

In Pilger's 2002 work, The New Rulers of the World, he draws conclusions about the development of regions such as Indonesia, Iraq, and Australia from evidence he has gathered in extensive investigations. Much of his writing stands against the treatment of smaller communities by world powers, lumping Europe with the United States in many instances as a gigantic Western force against the less developed areas of the world, and in less dramatic examples, posing Australia as a nation against the Aboriginal peoples, who are a small entity within the far larger political and economic machine. Stephen Howe, reviewing the volume for New Statesman, observed that "the stark polarities of Pilger's approach do not only oversimplify; they risk repelling the waverers, the troubled liberal souls whose support he should be trying to win." However, Howe goes on to stress that the style of Pilger's approach does not truly detract from his message, indicating that the book "may be longer on anger than on analysis, but it has real power as an indictment of ‘globalisation.’" In a review for Canadian Dimension, Michael R. Welton commented: "John Pilger is one of a coterie of brilliant and courageous journalists and filmmakers in our age of delirium and delusion. He speaks out, tells the truth and refuses to accept clichés."

Pilger served as editor on the book Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World. He pulled together moving and groundbreaking writing from the last sixty years, including the works of such notable journalists as Edward R. Murrow, Jessica Mitford, and Edward Schlosser. The writing addresses some of the most important moments and events in recent history, including economic, social, and political topics. Vanessa Bush, reviewing for Booklist, opined that the volume "will appeal to readers concerned about media consolidation and the ability of the press to discern and tell the truth." Writing for the New Internationalist, David Ransom declared that "John Pilger has mined a collection of gems."

Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire offers readers a look at various countries that have struggled to overcome their ruling empires, concentrating primarily on those areas of the world where the fight for freedom has been long and arduous, such as South Africa, India, Palestine, and Afghanistan. Pilger focuses on segments of world history that tend to receive less traditional media attention, and provides a voice to people often ignored. He chronicles the atrocities committed over the course of his years of investigating these revolutions, providing a clear picture of the ways in which history repeats itself over and over, regardless of the geographic location or the beliefs of the people involved. David Ransom, reviewing for the New Internationalist, remarked of Pilger that "he never leaves room for serious doubt, however, that there will indeed be a next time—and, with any luck, he will be there to report it." New Zealand Management contributor Jonathan Dodd stated that "reviewing a John Pilger book is a somewhat futile exercise. It's a foregone conclusion that it will be brilliant, insightful and moving."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African Business, January, 2005, review of Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World, p. 64.

Booklist, April 1, 1999, Mary Carroll, review of Hidden Agendas, p. 1367; September 15, 2005, Vanessa Bush, review of Tell Me No Lies, p. 8; March 15, 2007, Vanessa Bush, review of Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire, p. 9.

Briarpatch, February, 2005, Theresa Wolfwood, review of Reporting the World: John Pilger's Great Eyewitness Photographers, p. 30.

Broadcast, July 26, 2002, "Pilger Hits out at TV 11 September Plans," p. 1.

Canadian Dimension, May 1, 2003, Michael R. Welton, review of The New Rulers of the World, p. 45.

Columbia Journalism Review, November 1, 2005, James Boylan, review of Tell Me No Lies, p. 69.

Ecologist, July 1, 1998, David Edwards, review of Hidden Agendas, p. 244.

Journal of Australian Studies, December, 2001, James Wells-Green, review of Heroes, p. 131.

Media International Australia, February, 1999, John Tebbut, review of Hidden Agendas. p. 179.

New Internationalist, June, 1998, review of Hidden Agendas, p. 32; January 1, 1999, review of Hidden Agendas, p. 45; August, 2002, David Ransom, review of The New Rulers of the World, p. 33; March, 2006, David Ransom, review of Tell Me No Lies, p. 29; November, 2006, David Ransom, review of Freedom Next Time, p. 27.

New Scientist, August 3, 2002, review of The New Rulers of the World, p. 50.

New Statesman, May 15, 1981, William Boyd, review of Heroes, p. 22; June 25, 2001, "John Pilger," p. 6; June 24, 2002, Stephen Howe, "A Bitter Pill," p. 54; May 12, 2003, "The Tall, Ruddy-faced Man Opened My Door and Said: ‘I'm Jim Howard. Where Do I Start?’ So Began the Rescue of Cambodia, One of the Biggest and Boldest Relief Operations in History," p. 12.

New Statesman and Society, September 29, 1989, Robert Carver, review of A Secret Country, p. 39; July 12, 1991, Martha Gellhorn, article on Pilger, p. 26.

New Zealand Management, December, 2006, Jonathan Dodd, review of Freedom Next Time, p. 26.

Overland, winter, 2002, "Debunking the Master Illusion."

Publishers Weekly, March 29, 1999, review of Hidden Agendas, p. 82.

Quill, January 1, 2006, review of Tell Me No Lies, p. 14.

Times Literary Supplement, June 26, 1998, Adam Roberts, review of Hidden Agendas, p. 32.