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Al journalism should be investigative, from football to cookery

John Pilger

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John Pilger
Age: 84
Born: 1939
Born: October 9
Director
Film Director
Journalist
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Sydney
NSW
Investigative
Cookery
Als
Journalism
Football

More quotes by John Pilger

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Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days.
John Pilger
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The Mirror has become an important antidote to a media that is, most of it, supportive of the establishment, some of it quite rabidly rightwing. The Mirror is breaking ranks, and that's good news.
John Pilger
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During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places.
John Pilger
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Israel is the American watchdog in the Middle East, and that's why the Palestinians remain victims of one of the longest military occupations. They don't have oil. If they were the Saudis, they wouldn't be in the position they are now. But they have the power of being able to upset the imperial order in the Middle East.
John Pilger
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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.
John Pilger
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Official truths are often powerful illusions.
John Pilger
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Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words impartiality and objectivity is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over. Impartiality and objectivity now mean the establishment point of view.
John Pilger
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Watch how the propaganda unfolds once the bombing is over and the Americans are running Baghdad and their spin machine. There will be the discovery of Saddam's secret arsenal, probably in the basement of one his palaces.
John Pilger
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When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience.
John Pilger
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It's quite clear that Gore won most of the votes. I think the accurate description for them is a military plutocracy. Having lived and worked in the United States, I must add that I don't want to make too much of the distinction between the Bush regime and its predecessors. I don't see a great deal of difference.
John Pilger
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In the sublime days before 11 September 2001, when the powerful were routinely attacking and terrorising the weak, and those dying were black or brown-skinned non-people living in faraway places such as Zaire and Guatemala, there was no terrorism. When the weak attacked the powerful, spectacularly on 9/11, there was terrorism.
John Pilger
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The censorship is such on television in the U.S. that films like mine don't stand a chance.
John Pilger
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The people who died in the Twin Towers in that terrible crime mattered. The people who were bombed to death in dusty villages in Afghanistan didn't matter, even though it now seems that their numbers were greater. The people who will die in Iraq don't matter.
John Pilger
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An elite group of less than a billion people now take more than 80 per cent of the world's wealth.
John Pilger
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Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days. When you have someone like Cheney who talks about endless war or war that might last fifty years, he could be Big Brother. You have Bush incessantly going on about the evil ones.
John Pilger
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Whenever a journalist says to me, Oh, you don't understand, I'm impartial, I'm objective, I know what he's saying. I can decode it immediately. It means he channels the official truth. Almost always. That protestation means he speaks for a consensual view of the establishment. This is internalized.
John Pilger
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Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.
John Pilger
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Private Manning is the world's pre-eminent prisoner of conscience, having remained true to the Nuremberg principle that every soldier has the right to 'a moral choice.' His suffering mocks the notion of the land of the free.
John Pilger
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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.
John Pilger
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I grew up in Sydney in a very political household, where we were all for the underdog.
John Pilger