Ben Bagdikian

Ben-hur Haig Bagdikian (January 30, 1920 – March 11, 2016) was an Armenian-American journalist, news media critic and commentator, and university professor.

An Armenian genocide survivor, Bagdikian moved to the United States as an infant and began a journalism career after serving in World War II. He worked as a local reporter, investigative journalist and foreign correspondent for The Providence Journal. During his time there, he won a Peabody Award and a Pulitzer Prize. In 1971, he received parts of the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg and successfully persuaded The Washington Post to publish them despite objections and threats from the Richard Nixon administration. Bagdikian later taught at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and served as its dean from 1985 to 1988.

Bagdikian was a noted critic of the news media. His 1983 book The Media Monopoly, warning about the growing concentration of corporate ownership of news organizations, went through several editions and influenced, among others, Noam Chomsky. Bagdikian has been hailed for his ethical standards and has been described by Robert W. McChesney as one of the finest journalists of the 20th century.