John Pilger grew up in Bondi, Sydney, New South Wales, and launched his first newspaper at Sydney High School, and later completed a cadetship with Australian Consolidated Press. As a chief foreign correspondent 'he had reported from all over the world, and covered numerous wars, notably Vietnam.' In his twenties, he was the youngest journalist to win Britain's highest award for journalism twice. In the late 1960s and 1970s while in the United States he had reported on the upheavals, marched with America's poor from Alabama to Washington; the assassination of Martin Luther King, and was presented at the assassination of Robert Kennedy (Presidential candidate) in 1968.
In South East Asia, he produced an iconic issue of the London Mirror newspaper, mostly 'exclusive dispatches from Cambodia in the aftermath of Pol Pot's reign'. In 1994, Pilger documented and dispatched reports from East Timor, and 'helped galvanised support for the East Timorese, then occupied by Indonesia'.
He produced numerous documentaries on Australia, 'notably The Secret Country (1983), The Last Dream (1988), Welcome to Australia (1999) and Utopia (2013), all celebrated and revealed much of Australia's "forgotten past", especially its Indigenous past and present.
Pilger had received many awards for his documentaries, including an Emmy and a BAFTA (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards), and Royal Television Society's Best Documentary awards. (Source: Johnpilger website)
