John Pilger, a muckraking foreign correspondent and documentarian who trained his often righteous anger on injustices around the globe, like the Khmer Rouge’s genocide in Cambodia and human rights abuses in East Timor, died on Dec. 30 in London.
His son, Sam, said the cause of death, in a hospital, was pulmonary fibrosis.
A tireless critic of Western imperialism and a voice for the voiceless, Mr. Pilger was comfortable with his role as a journalistic provocateur.
He once derided impartiality as “a euphemism for the consensual view of established authority.”But he was sometimes criticized for shaping his reporting to fit his leftist worldview — that United States foreign policy had often helped cause misery around the world.
Mr. Pilger (pronounced PILL-jer), with blond surfer looks, was among the first journalists to enter Cambodia after Vietnam drove out Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in 1979, ending its nearly four-year reign of terror during which about two million people died.
Persons:
John Pilger, documentarian, Sam, Pilger, Pol
Locations:
Cambodia, East Timor, London, States, Vietnam, Rouge