Born 1920. Ben Bagdikian began his career in
journalism in 1941. Within a few years,
he started focusing on the inaccuracies of the decade's most prominent news
commentators, and eventually widened his investigative net to analyze the entire
media industry. His dedicated research into the problems of media
conglomeration
and news suppression have earned him many prestigious awards, including the
Pulitzer Prize.
In 1977, he accepted a teaching position at
UC Berkeley
and would eventually become Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism.
Bagdikian has written several books, but his most popular by far is
The Media Monopoly, first
published in 1983. At that time, he estimated that fewer than fifty companies control virtually
all the world's media outlets, and was branded an "alarmist" for warning of an imminent trend toward
increased conglomeration. As it turns out, he was absolutely right, and has since released revised
editions of The Media Monopoly which keep shrinking the number of distinct media owners (it's now down to about six).
As a public speaker and columnist, Bagdikian's
lucid, sobering media
criticism has often been compared to the
political essays of
Noam Chomsky. Leftist commentators like
Jello Biafra are particularly fond of using The Media Monopoly to show the inherent
conflict of interest and the widening
credibility gap in modern, corporate-controlled media.