❚ ONE OF THE GREATEST post-war crusading journalists has died after a lifetime of championing frank journalism and regularly criticising the mainstream media. In 2002, John Pilger said that “many journalists now are no more than channellers and echoers of what Orwell called the official truth”.
Though aged only 28 when named in the British Press Awards as Journalist of the Year 1967, Pilger became the backbone of the Daily Mirror’s revolutionary investigative Mirrorscope sections – four-pagers twice a week – when the tabloid respected for its humanity was selling 5million copies a day (long before The Sun posed any kind of threat), the world’s highest English-language circulation.
Pilger was already a mentor for me in 1969 when the paper created its glossy mid-week Mirror Magazine and I joined in my first Fleet Street job, surrounded by the giants of the day.
Pilger spent 23 years with the Mirror, through what proved a golden age for British journalism. It was not to last. In a landmark New Statesman column in December 1991 he reflected on how popular journalism had been hijacked by both “the monster” Robert Maxwell, who lucked into buying the Mirror after a management cock-up and reduced its sales to an all-time low, and by Rupert Murdoch whose Sun had overtaken its rival’s sales by creating an agenda of sexism, racism and voyeurism. Pilger savaged the journalists in both camps for their cynicism.
His later career included more than 60 hard-hitting ITV documentaries which won Bafta and Emmy awards. The activist Noam Chomsky said of him: “John Pilger’s work has been a beacon of light in often dark times.” Playwright Harold Pinter described him as “fearless”. Pilger’s is a voice we still need to hear.
❏ John Pilger, 9 October 1939 – 30 December 2023
➢ Pilger’s own informative website
➢ Heroes Paperback – 1 Feb 2001 – John Pilger’s autobiography
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 