Ben Bagdikian

Ben Bagdikian
Born	Ben Bagdikian
Nationality	Armenian-American

Ben Haig Bagdikian (born 1920, Maraş, Ottoman Empire; now in Turkey) is an American educator and journalist. Bagdikian has made journalism his profession since 1941. He is a significant American media critic and the dean emeritus of the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. In 1983, Bagdikian published The Media Monopoly, which revealed the fast-moving media conglomeration that was putting more and more media corporations in fewer and fewer hands with each new merger. This work has been updated through six editions (through 2000) before being renamed The New Media Monopoly and is considered a crucial resource for knowledge about media ownership. Bagdikian is credited with the observation that "Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukulele."

In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg gave Bagdikian — then an editor at the Washington Post — portions of the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret classified history of the Vietnam War. Bagdikian passed a copy of the documents to Senator Mike Gravel, who promptly read them into the Congressional Record.

Bibliography

• In the Midst of Plenty: A New Report on the Poor in America, Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
• The Information Machines: Their impact on Men and the Media, New York: Harper & Row, 1971, ISBN 0-06-090258-2
• The Effete Conspiracy and Other Crime by the Press, New York: Harper, 1974. ISBN 0-06-090343-0
• Caged: Eight Prisoners & Their Keepers, New York: Harper, 1976. ISBN 0-06-010174-1
• The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon Press, 1983. ISBN 0-8070-6179-4
  • New Edition with extensions The New Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8070-6187-5
• Double Vision: Reflections on My Heritage, Life, and Profession, Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8070-7066-1

Honors

Mother Jones, a nonprofit news organization that specializes in investigative, political, and social justice reporting, has created a program after Ben called Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program for interns aspiring to become investigative reporters.

As editor

• "Man's Contracting World in an Expanding Universe", Proceedings of the Brown University Convocation held in Providence, RI October 21-23, 1959, Brown University, 1960.
• "The Shame Of The Prisons", The Washington Post national report, with Leon Dash, 1972.
• The Memoir of Lydia Bagdikian, by Lydia Bagdikian, Berkeley, California: Private printing. Based on notebook diaries of Ben Bagdikian's older sister Lydia, 1997.

External links

• Bagdikian's ZNet HomePage. Includes Znet commentaries by him, and Znet articles by or about Ben Bagdikian.
• Bagdikian's biography at The Library of Americas' Reporting Civil Rights web site
• Bagdikian's biography at the Harvard Square Library's Notable American Unitarians web site
• Bagdikian's articles at FindArticles.com
• Beacon Press web site for New Media Monopoly.
• Media Monopoly excerpts
• PBS interview about Media Monopoly