Reflections with John Pilger

27/06/12 In association with BBC College of Journalism

Renowned investigative journalist, author and documentary film-maker John Pilger will be joining us in conversation with broadcaster, journalist and writer Charles Glass to look back on half a century of reporting from around the world.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Pilger arrived in London in the 1960s and joined Reuters later moving to the London Daily Mirror, then Britain's biggest selling newspaper and undergoing remarkable changes to a serious tabloid.

He has reported from all over the world, covering numerous wars, notably Vietnam and the Middle East. He was the youngest journalist to be named Journalist of the Year and the first to win it twice.

In the United States Pilger reported the upheavals of the late 1960s and 1970s, marching with America's poor from Alabama to Washington following the assassination of Martin Luther King. He was in the same room when Robert Kennedy, the presidential candidate, was assassinated in June 1968.

His newspaper reports and films from Cambodia and East Timor alerted much of the world to those tragedies and struggles He has won an Emmy and a BAFTA for his documentaries, which have also won numerous US and European awards, such as as the Royal Television Society's Best Documentary

The War You Don't See

  

2015 - 'The Coming War' - Contribute to John Pilger's new documentary project here bit.ly/PilgerMovie

Buy The War You Don't See on DVD - networkonair.com/shop/1271-john-pilger-the-war-you-don-t-see.html or as a download at vimeo.com/ondemand/waryoudontsee

John Pilger's 'The War You Don't See' (2011) is a powerful and timely investigation into the media's role in war, tracing the history of 'embedded' and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an 'electronic battlefield' in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy?

John Pilger says in the film: "We journalists... have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country... That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home... In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us... Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power."