Based in the UK since 1962, John Pilger has been an internationally influential investigative reporter, film-maker and author. A strong critic of Australian, British and American foreign policy since his early reporting days in Vietnam, his polemical style has often made him a polarising figure. When he talks, I listen.
He's written about a dozen books and made scores of documentaries, amongst them "The Quiet Mutiny", made in 1970 during one of his visits to Vietnam, the 1979 documentary "Year Zero" about the aftermath of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, and the 1993 "Death of a Nation - The Timor Conspiracy". His latest is the 2016 "The Coming War on China".
Pilger has been routinely criticised for lacking objectivity, a concept he has dismissed for decades as the position of corporate journalists who routinely forget that they should be reporting on and defending the most marginalised citizens in society rather than siding or socialising with prime ministers, presidents and officials. He has been unapologetic about his defence of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange along with his criticism of liberal heroes such as Barack Obama. Noam Chomsky has called Pilger’s journalism “a beacon of light in often dark times.”
As he himself has said, "When they call you a Communist, you must be doing something right." You are doing something right, John Pilger!
