| R I P John Pilger on 14:53 - Dec 31 with 1838 views | factual_blue |
This is a clearly very suspicious death and needs an in-depth investigation. |  |
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| R I P John Pilger on 15:48 - Dec 31 with 1715 views | Eireannach_gorm |
Sad to hear of the passing of a superb investigative journalist who seemed to go off the rails after 2014 and went to the dark side. |  | | |
| R I P John Pilger on 18:19 - Dec 31 with 1532 views | Ryorry |
R.I.P.
This sums him up well for me, whether you 'sided' with him in his various campaigns or not -
"He was one of the greats. A consistent ally of the dispossessed, John dedicated his life to telling their stories and awoke the world to the greatest injustices. He showed great empathy for the weak and was unflinching with the powerful."
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| R I P John Pilger on 18:29 - Dec 31 with 1501 views | DJR |
| R I P John Pilger on 18:19 - Dec 31 by Ryorry |
R.I.P.
This sums him up well for me, whether you 'sided' with him in his various campaigns or not -
"He was one of the greats. A consistent ally of the dispossessed, John dedicated his life to telling their stories and awoke the world to the greatest injustices. He showed great empathy for the weak and was unflinching with the powerful."
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The recent article linked in Stella Assange's Tweet is well worth reading to show he had lost nothing of his passion as he aged.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/09/john-pilger-we-are-spartacus/ [Post edited 31 Dec 2023 18:40]
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| R I P John Pilger on 18:51 - Dec 31 with 1445 views | Radlett_blue |
We certainly need good quality, investigative journalists. However, Pilger may have become a Grumpy Old Man. |  |
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| R I P John Pilger on 19:42 - Dec 31 with 1406 views | Eireannach_gorm |
As I said a brilliant investigative journalist who by his encounters with US interference around the word ended up supporting any country that was against a perceived US backed country. His support for Russia and China were based on the US interference model. Likewise Assange. While the Assange affair has some US meddling validity, the others are just anti US propaganda. The NHS investigation proved how good he was without the US tinted glasses.
https://www.scmp.com/video/talking-post/3184403/war-propaganda-john-pilger-ukrai [Post edited 31 Dec 2023 19:43]
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| R I P John Pilger on 22:47 - Dec 31 with 1313 views | Kievthegreat |
| R I P John Pilger on 15:48 - Dec 31 by Eireannach_gorm |
Sad to hear of the passing of a superb investigative journalist who seemed to go off the rails after 2014 and went to the dark side. |
He went off the rails before 2014. He denied the genocide in Kosovo as well in the 90s.
For whatever good he did early in his career, by the end he was a complete crank. |  | | |
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| R I P John Pilger on 10:38 - Jan 1 with 1130 views | DJR |
| R I P John Pilger on 18:51 - Dec 31 by Radlett_blue |
We certainly need good quality, investigative journalists. However, Pilger may have become a Grumpy Old Man. |
I'm not sure there is much scope for proper investigative journalism these days. With the two main parties coalescing around the same foreign and economic policies, and the political parameters ranging from Starmer centrism at one end to the sort of right wing nonsense spouted on GB News at the other, there isn't really any platform for serious journalists outside those parameters. Hence people like Peter Oborne becoming pariahs because, for example they call out things like client journalism at the BBC.
Orwell, in what was to have been the forward to Animal Farm, put it best, although perhaps ironically he was writing at a time when the prevailing orthodoxy was an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia
"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
In that article he also highlighted what I would call the illiberal liberal and what he called the renegade liberal. These days it seems to me to manifest itself in casting aspersions against individuals for the views they hold rather than challenging those views, which should be what a true liberal does. This is how Orwell put it.
"One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought." [Post edited 1 Jan 14:58]
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| R I P John Pilger on 10:50 - Jan 1 with 1114 views | ArnoldMoorhen |
| R I P John Pilger on 10:38 - Jan 1 by DJR |
I'm not sure there is much scope for proper investigative journalism these days. With the two main parties coalescing around the same foreign and economic policies, and the political parameters ranging from Starmer centrism at one end to the sort of right wing nonsense spouted on GB News at the other, there isn't really any platform for serious journalists outside those parameters. Hence people like Peter Oborne becoming pariahs because, for example they call out things like client journalism at the BBC.
Orwell, in what was to have been the forward to Animal Farm, put it best, although perhaps ironically he was writing at a time when the prevailing orthodoxy was an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia
"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
In that article he also highlighted what I would call the illiberal liberal and what he called the renegade liberal. These days it seems to me to manifest itself in casting aspersions against individuals for the views they hold rather than challenging those views, which should be what a true liberal does. This is how Orwell put it.
"One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought." [Post edited 1 Jan 14:58]
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I don't think your first line quite conveys the sense of what you are saying.
There is plenty of "scope" for investigative journalists, it's just that foreign media ownership, super-cautious legal departments and the collapse of the print media business model, on the one hand, make the commitment from the top less likely. And the 24 hour rolling news cycle, clickbait centric home pages, sensationalist shock jocks throwing mud and "citizen journalism" online make for an incredibly noisy and fast-paced environment in which solid stories are quickly choked.
If popular opinion can be so heavily against asylum seekers after we saw the photo of Alan Kurdi, it just goes to show how quickly we move on, and how easily button pressing rabble rousers can set the agenda.
If this is too long for many to read, that is part of the explanation for the death of investigative journalism, too. |  | | |
| R I P John Pilger on 10:51 - Jan 1 with 1112 views | DJR |
| R I P John Pilger on 19:42 - Dec 31 by Eireannach_gorm |
As I said a brilliant investigative journalist who by his encounters with US interference around the word ended up supporting any country that was against a perceived US backed country. His support for Russia and China were based on the US interference model. Likewise Assange. While the Assange affair has some US meddling validity, the others are just anti US propaganda. The NHS investigation proved how good he was without the US tinted glasses.
https://www.scmp.com/video/talking-post/3184403/war-propaganda-john-pilger-ukrai [Post edited 31 Dec 2023 19:43]
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I think the term US tinted glasses is more aptly applied to the two main political parties which, for as long as I can remember, have not diverged one iota from US foreign policy.
As it is, I am not aware of precisely what Pilger has said on China and Russia but if we are being presented by the media and the two main parties with only one narrative surely it is healthy in a democracy for people to challenge what we are being told?
And if Pilger is wrong in what he says, better to say so rather than call him a supporter, apologist or crank, which seems to me to be solely designed to close down debate, and is what I would regard as illiberal liberalism. | | | |
| R I P John Pilger on 12:22 - Jan 1 with 1039 views | DJR |
| R I P John Pilger on 10:50 - Jan 1 by ArnoldMoorhen |
I don't think your first line quite conveys the sense of what you are saying.
There is plenty of "scope" for investigative journalists, it's just that foreign media ownership, super-cautious legal departments and the collapse of the print media business model, on the one hand, make the commitment from the top less likely. And the 24 hour rolling news cycle, clickbait centric home pages, sensationalist shock jocks throwing mud and "citizen journalism" online make for an incredibly noisy and fast-paced environment in which solid stories are quickly choked.
If popular opinion can be so heavily against asylum seekers after we saw the photo of Alan Kurdi, it just goes to show how quickly we move on, and how easily button pressing rabble rousers can set the agenda.
If this is too long for many to read, that is part of the explanation for the death of investigative journalism, too. |
I probably could have expressed it better but I was using "scope" in the following sense of its meaning , namely, "the opportunity or possibility to do or deal with something". This was intended in part to pick up what you mention but mainly to indicate that the media in this country in the main doesn't give a platform to investigative journalists who don't fit the prevailing orthodoxy.
As it is, there is some very decent investigative journalism in Private Eye, but it strikes me as being investigative journalism which fits within the parameters I mentioned in an earlier post. [Post edited 1 Jan 14:56]
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| R I P John Pilger on 14:47 - Jan 1 with 977 views | TheProf |
| R I P John Pilger on 10:38 - Jan 1 by DJR |
I'm not sure there is much scope for proper investigative journalism these days. With the two main parties coalescing around the same foreign and economic policies, and the political parameters ranging from Starmer centrism at one end to the sort of right wing nonsense spouted on GB News at the other, there isn't really any platform for serious journalists outside those parameters. Hence people like Peter Oborne becoming pariahs because, for example they call out things like client journalism at the BBC.
Orwell, in what was to have been the forward to Animal Farm, put it best, although perhaps ironically he was writing at a time when the prevailing orthodoxy was an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia
"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
In that article he also highlighted what I would call the illiberal liberal and what he called the renegade liberal. These days it seems to me to manifest itself in casting aspersions against individuals for the views they hold rather than challenging those views, which should be what a true liberal does. This is how Orwell put it.
"One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought." [Post edited 1 Jan 14:58]
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Great to see these posts on Twtd on John Pilger. When at Staffs Uni I presented JP for the award of an hon degree. A great journalist and campaigner, and a great guy |  | | |
| R I P John Pilger on 01:41 - Jan 2 with 831 views | Eireannach_gorm |
| R I P John Pilger on 10:51 - Jan 1 by DJR |
I think the term US tinted glasses is more aptly applied to the two main political parties which, for as long as I can remember, have not diverged one iota from US foreign policy.
As it is, I am not aware of precisely what Pilger has said on China and Russia but if we are being presented by the media and the two main parties with only one narrative surely it is healthy in a democracy for people to challenge what we are being told?
And if Pilger is wrong in what he says, better to say so rather than call him a supporter, apologist or crank, which seems to me to be solely designed to close down debate, and is what I would regard as illiberal liberalism. |
I meant to say anti US tinted glasses and in the linked interview, John gives his view on Russia and China. Certain specific things he said regarding incidents in Ukraine have been proven wrong. Challenging the truth is a good thing but not undermining it by falsehoods.
Overall,John was a good egg and his passing has left a void to be filled unfortunately by troll farms and AI bots. [Post edited 2 Jan 14:57]
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