2024 is off to a troubling start with the death of John Pilger. That means there will be one less voice challenging received ideas and make people think about stuff they have just taken for granted.
I have linked the Guardian obituary which I know would annoy him because he spent most of his career spleening about the mainstream media. He'd be pissed off that he's got all those column inches in news outlets that would not have carried his work when he was alive.
Pilger was a good thing the way that maverick, iconoclastic journalists of what ever political hue are a good thing. They challenge orthodoxies. We need more of that - even people challenging from the right - not less. But as the Grand Old Beasts of classic journalism die, they don't seem to be getting replaced.
He wasn't perfect - I never agreed with his support for Julian Assange - but no one is perfect. The important thing is that he was brave and went to places people - even journalists - wouldn't normally think of going, to tell us what was going on.
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