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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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John Pilger
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: October 9
Director
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Vietnam was as much a laboratory experiment as a war.
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Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what Orwell called the official truth. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as functionaires, functionaries, not journalists.
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There isn't a war on terror, there is a war of terror.
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Using the passive voice is always very helpful. Mind you, a lot of that propaganda English emanates from here. The British establishment has always used the passive voice. It's been a weapon of discourse so those who committed terrible acts in the old empire could not be identified.
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Al journalism should be investigative, from football to cookery
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The impact of the human tragedies I've reported on is that, more often than not, I'll be angry. I want to know why is this child dying? These are not acts of God they're results of respectable politicians' decisions.
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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.
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The Palestinians 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.
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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.
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Bill Clinton kept funding Star Wars. He took the biggest military budget to Congress in history. He routinely bombed Iraq, and he kept the barbaric sanctions in place. He's really played his part. The George W. Bush gang has taken it just a little further.
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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.
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Bill Clinton persuaded some people that he was really a civilized character and his Administration had the best interests of humanity at heart. These days we don't have to put up with that nonsense. It's very clear that the George W. Bush Administration is out of control. It contains some truly dangerous people.
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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.
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During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places.
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