For me, John Pilger has been one of the most important journalism whistleblowers for many years, revealing how the media reports in a biased manner and how this has become worse rather than better over the years. This interview with Afshin Rattansi sees John share his current perspective of some current events such as the reporting of the Israeli destruction and genocide in Gaza and the reporting of events in Ukraine, a perspective I largely agree with (the interview is dated August 2nd, though only just released on YouTube).
In my view, John acts as an important “canary in the coalmine”, exposing this bias, and you can see from this interview that he does his best to open the eyes of young journalists to what real reporting should be.
But what John fails to do, in my opinion, is to ask why. Why is journalism so biased in the Western world and getting worse? Why, in all the time he has been reporting on the plight of the Palestinians or Australia’s aboriginal people’s persecution and genocide (at least 30 years), have things become worse rather than better? What is the thread that connects all of these seemingly unrelated events together? Who or what creates the context within which this abuse occurs and is intentionally airbrushed out of what is reported?
Until John or others like him begin to examine these questions, rather than railing against the continuation of such events and the biased – or more accurately, intentionally misleading and manipulative – reporting of these events, the game will go on. Until he pokes this underbelly and begins to reveal it, whilst he continues to poke at it, he remains very much part of the system he rightly rails against.
Recent Comments