Sydney Peace Foundation to Honour John Pilger
Sydney Peace Prize laureate 2009 John Pilger is internationally known for his uncompromising reporting on human rights abuses and his criticism of dubious governments’ policies. As a journalist he made speaking up against the peddling of Western influence and the oppression of minorities his business. It is most fitting that he be honoured by receiving this distinction.
Amongst other things, Pilger’s work has dealt with Western engagement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, East Timor, Cambodia and the humiliation of Aboriginal people in Australia.
"No other filmmaker has consistently exposed the reality of Western governments’ policies”, comments Historian Mark Curtis.
Pilger acts as a mouthpiece for the powerless to be heard and has helped raise the political consciousness of many.
But despite his work being broadly appreciated by readers and critics alike, there is also high skepticism regarding Pilger’s strong advancement of his own views in his writings. He’s regularly accussed of bias.
Not everybody, it seems, is happy to see him awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.
Robert Goot, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, complained of Pilger’s award in the Australian Jewish News that it was a “sad day“. Goot went on to assert Pilger had done “nothing to promote peace but only promoting one side of the [Mideast] dispute”. Goot says Pilger lacks objectivity and his pronouncements are often replete with factual inaccuracies and distortion of history. “His uncritical acceptance of one side’s narrative is made at the expense of Israel’s position” Goot says.
It is understandable to wish that Israeli fears and sorrows do not fall by the wayside. But one takes to a hard terrain by speaking about a lack of objectivity when talking about John Pilger.
Is it, in fact, not just another perspective he adopts and examines? By taking another view, Pilger challenges the ideological reproduction of the socially acceptable mainstream norms that have evolved mostly not by merit but rather due to an absence of alternative perspectives in the mainstream media.
Pilger’s 2002 documentary ‘Palestine Is Still the Issue’ broached the issue of the unchanging nature of the basic problems facing the Palestinians: a desperate, destitute people whose homeland is illegally occupied by the world’s fourth biggest military power. The film was nominated for a BAFTA, an acknowledgement of Pilger’s outstanding work and its important role in forming public opinion.
Pilger hears extraordinary stories from Palestinians though most of his interviews are with those Israelis whose voices are seldom heard; including the remarkable witness of a man who lost his daughter in a suicide bombing. One of the most powerful scenes shows Pilger being led through a former centre of Palestinian culture; where kids used to playfully learn by letting out their creativity in paintings, now the whole interior is destroyed and ravaged by Israeli soldiers. Watching those pictures causes sorrow and anger, but at the same time a feeling of duty and responsibility to take action.
Pilger’s is just one of many possible perspectives on a conflict, which is too complex and too long to come to a clear conclusion. Instead of being definitive Pilger opens our minds. People who never had the chance before to speak up publicly get a voice. Pilger brings perspectives to light not often aired in public.
Pilger enriches the media landscape significantly. He breaks down broader national and international conflicts to a personal level. Suddenly, one is able to grasp what it means for people to be caught up in the front lines of the wars of power and money and suffer from despair and helplessness every day.
“With truths the profession serves the society”, said world-renowned German sociologist Niklas Luhmann about Journalism in a lecture in 1994. The prestige of journalists, newspapers or editors depends upon the quality of their research. Even if one tries to protect oneself by references, falsity is often inevitable. Hoaxes are often launched from the outside.
To plagiarise Luhmann, the problem of producing a good journalistic publication doesn’t rest with truth or falsity; fortunately it is not academic research. Rather journalism has to be subjective. Objectivity must fail. There is no clear black and white, good and bad. Therefore the challenge is not to find a sacrosanct truth but controlling the inevitable as well as consciously volitional and regulated selection of journalistic issues and their narrative.
Naturally, media publications are always selective. Immaculate reporting is a myth.
John Pilger confronts us with a different perspective and supplements the mainstream media.
As an independent journalist Pilger tells stories that would likely otherwise remain untold. Pilger doesn’t want to be objective, because objectivity in the media itself is a legend. By giving the unheard a voice and presenting different points of view Pilger fights for equality.
For this, we should be thankful.
Uli Kammerer is a German student in media studies from the University of Cologne. He is participating in an exchange program with the University of Sydney where he hopes to gain practical skills and improve his language abilities before completing his German degree in 2010.
