Ben Bagdikian, Armenian-American educator and journalist, Died at 96

  Educator, Writers

Ben Haig Bagdikian was born on January 30, 1920, and died on March 11, 2016.

He was an Armenian-American educator and journalist.

Ben graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Mass., in 1941 and became a journalist.

Ben Bagdikian was a significant American media critic and the dean emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

During the year 1983, he 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.

However, this particular work has been updated through six editions (through 2000) before being renamed The New Media Monopoly and was considered a crucial resource for knowledge about media ownership.

Ben Bagdikian was credited with having made the observation that “Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper was like trying to play Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion’ on a ukulele.”

During 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.

He passed a copy of the documents to Senator Mike Gravel, who promptly read them into the Congressional Record.

Ben Bagdikian passed away at 96 yrs old.