John Pilger Quotes

The problem with media-run "conversations" on gender is not merely the almost total absence of male participants, but the suppression of class.

WikiLeaks has achieved far more than what The New York Times and The Washington Post in their celebrated incarnations did. No newspaper has come close to matching the secrets and lies of power that Assange and Snowden have disclosed. That both men are fugitives is indicative of the retreat of liberal democracies from principles of freedom and justice. Why is WikiLeaks a landmark in journalism? Because its revelations have told us, with 100 per cent accuracy, how and why much of the world is divided and run.

I always say that the difference between the United States and Australia is that US settlers were on a mission from God whereas Australian settlers were God-forsaken.

When I began as a journalist, especially as a foreign correspondent, the press in the UK was conservative and owned by powerful establishment forces, as it is now. But the difference compared to today is that there were spaces for independent journalism that dissented from the received 'wisdom' of authority. That space has now all but closed and independent journalists have gone to the internet, or to a metaphoric underground.

In the pages of liberal newspapers in the West, race and class are two words almost never uttered in the mendacious “coverage” of Washington’s latest, most naked attempt to grab the world’s greatest source of oil and reclaim its “backyard”. For all the chavistas’ faults — such as allowing the Venezuelan economy to become hostage to the fortunes of oil and never seriously challenging big capital and corruption — they brought social justice and pride to millions of people and they did it with unprecedented democracy.

I stand by every word I've ever written. I can back everything up with facts. I have never made the facts fit an agenda, unlike the corporate media. But, if I didn't annoy all the right people all the time, I would be very upset.

The consensus, often called "the tolerant society," began to sicken under the Labor Governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan; under Mrs. Thatcher, it is dying. One example: There are 7,000 officially recorded racist attacks each year. The true figure is probably many times that. Of immigrant families I have interviewed, none allow their children to play outside, none has escaped at least one firebombing, none bother to call the police for fear of being arrested themselves on a bogus charge.

[On Barack Obama:] No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous 'Change you can believe in,' it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. 'We will be the most powerful,' he often declared.

The single biggest challenge is rescuing journalism from its deferential role as the stenographer of great power. The United States has constitutionally the freest press on earth, yet in practice it has a media obsequious to the formulas and deceptions of power. That is why the US was effectively given media approval to invade Iraq, and Libya, and Syria and dozens of other countries.

Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.

I've never seen myself as a campaigning journalist. A maverick, yes. But I'm a reporter and I'll always be a reporter, forever curious. And, I suppose, if anything drives me it's curiosity

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.

On 28 January China said it would welcome international help as it struggled to contain coronavirus. No substantial help has come. Instead of solidarity and defying WHO, the US, Australia, Britain seek to isolate China, returning it to a state of siege and the dangers of the past.

In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor.

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.