By John Pilger
John Pilger made the following remarks in presenting the 15th Martha Gellhorn Prize to the American journalist Robert Parry at a dinner in London on 27 June 2017...
June 28, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - There are too many awards for journalism. Too many simply celebrate the status quo. The idea that journalists ought to challenge the status quo - what Orwell called Newspeak and Robert Parry calls 'groupthink' - is becoming increasingly rare.
More than a generation ago, a space opened
up for a journalism that dissented from the
groupthink and flourished briefly and often
tenuously in the press and broadcasting.
Today, that space has almost closed in the
so-called mainstream media. The best
journalists have become - often against
their will - dissidents.
The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
recognises these honourable exceptions. It
is very different from other prizes. Let me
quote in full why we give this award:
'The Gellhorn Prize is in honour of one of
the 20th century's greatest reporters. It is
awarded to a journalist whose work has
penetrated the established version of events
and told an unpalatable truth - a truth
validated by powerful facts that expose what
Martha Gellhorn called "official drivel".
She meant establishment propaganda.'
Martha was renowned as a war reporter. Her
dispatches from Spain in the 1930s and D-Day
in 1944 are classics. But she was more than
that. As both a reporter and a committed
humanitarian, she was a pioneer: one of the
first in Vietnam to report what she called
'a new kind of war against civilians': a
precursor to the wars of today.
She was the reason I was sent to Vietnam as
a reporter. My editor had spread across his
desk her articles that had run in the
Guardian and the St Louis Post-Dispatch. A
headline read, 'Targeting the people.' For
that series, she was placed on a black-list
by the US military and never allowed to
return to South Vietnam.
She and I became good friends. Indeed, all
my fellow judges of the Martha Gellhorn
Prize - Sandy and Shirlee Matthews, James
Fox, Jeremy Harding - have that in common.
We keep her memory.
She was indefatigable. She would call very
early in the morning and open up the
conversation with one of her favourite
expressions - 'I smell a rat'.
When, in 1990, President George Bush Senior
invaded Panama on the pretext of nabbing his
old CIA buddy General Noriega, the embedded
media made almost no mention of civilian
suffering.
My phone rang. 'I smell a rat', said a
familiar voice.
Within 24 hours Martha was on a plane to
Panama. She was then in her 80s. She went
straight to the barrios of Panama City, and
walked from door to door, interviewing
ordinary people. That was the way she worked
- in apartheid South Africa, in the favelas
of Brazil, in the villages of Vietnam.
She estimated that the American bombing and
invasion of Panama had killed at least 6,000
people.
She flew to Washington and stood up at a
press conference at the Pentagon and asked a
general: 'Why did you kill so many people
then lie about it?'
Imagine that question being asked today. And
that is what we are honouring this evening.
Truth-telling, and the courage to find out,
to ask the forbidden question.
Robert Parry is a very distinguished
honourable exception.
I first heard of Bob Parry in the 1980s when
he broke the Iran-Contra scandal as an
Associated Press reporter. This was a story
as important as Watergate. Some would say it
was more important.
The administration of Ronald Reagan had
secretly and illegally sold weapons to Iran
in order to secretly and illegally bankroll
a bloodthirsty group known as the Contras,
which was then trying to crush Nicaragua's
Sandinista government - on behalf of the
CIA. You could barely make it up.
Bob Parry's career has been devoted to
finding out, lifting rocks - and supporting
others who do the same.
In the 1990s, he supported Gary Webb, who
revealed that the Reagan administration had
allowed the Contras to traffic cocaine in
the US. For this, Webb was crucified by the
so-called mainstream media, and took his own
life. Lifting the big rocks can be as
dangerous as a war zone.
In 1995, Parry founded his own news service,
the Consortium for Independent Journalism.
But, really, there was just him. Today, his
website consortiumnews.com reflects the
authority and dissidence that marks Parry's
career.
What he does is make sense of the news - why
Saudi Arabia should be held accountable; why
the invasion of Libya was a folly and a
crime; why the New York Times is an
apologist for great power; why Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump have much in
common; why Russia is not our enemy; why
history is critical to understanding.
For his journalism, Robert Parry is the
winner of the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize. He
joins the likes of Robert Fisk, Iona Craig,
Patrick Cockburn, Mohammed Omer, Dahr Jamail,
Marie Colvin, Julian Assange, Gareth Porter
and other honourable exceptions.
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© John Pilger 2010 - 2017