44 Facts About Ben Bagdikian

Ben-hur Haig Bagdikian was an American journalist, news media critic and commentator, and university professor.

Ben Bagdikian worked as a local reporter, investigative journalist and foreign correspondent for The Providence Journal.

Ben Bagdikian later taught at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and served as its dean from 1985 to 1988.

Ben 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.

Ben Bagdikian did graduate work at the American University of Beirut.

Ben Bagdikian's father spoke Armenian, Turkish, Arabic, and learned the Biblical languages.

Ben Bagdikian's family left Marash on February 9,1920, just ten days after Ben was born.

Ben Bagdikian's father was a pastor at several Armenian churches in the Boston area and Worcester.

Ben Bagdikian had taken courses at the Harvard Divinity School and had been ordained.

When Ben Bagdikian was three years old his mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis almost immediately after arrival in Boston and died three years later, after spending some time hospitalized in sanatoriums.

Ben Bagdikian initially aspired to become a doctor because of his mother's illness and his father's collection of books on pulmonary diseases that he read.

Ben Bagdikian thereafter attended Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, as a pre-medical student.

Ben Bagdikian was editor of The Clark News, the college newspaper.

Ben Bagdikian renamed it to The Clark Scarlet, based on the school's colors.

Ben Bagdikian had the opportunity to work as a lab assistant at Monsanto in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Ben Bagdikian served as a navigator in the United States Army Air Forces from May 1942 to January 1946.

Ben Bagdikian had volunteered to join the Air Forces immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Ben Bagdikian married Elizabeth Ogasapian in 1942, with whom he had two sons: Aram Christopher "Chris" Ben Bagdikian and Frederick, Jr.

Ben Bagdikian died at his home in Berkeley, California, on March 11,2016, aged 96.

Ben Bagdikian began working for the Providence Journal in 1947 as a reporter and Washington bureau chief.

Ben Bagdikian was a member of the staff that received the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, Edition Time for coverage of a bank robbery in East Providence that resulted in the death of a patrolman.

Ben Bagdikian later described the paper as one of the better papers, besides their pro-Republican and anti-union editorials.

In 1957, Ben Bagdikian covered the civil rights movement, especially the crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Ben Bagdikian began a freelance career after leaving the Providence Journal in 1961.

Ben Bagdikian researched media matters at the Library of Congress with the Guggenheim Fellowship he was awarded in 1961.

Ben Bagdikian wrote for The New York Times Magazine when he focused on social issues, such as poverty, housing, and migration.

Ben Bagdikian joined The Washington Post in 1970 and later served as its assistant managing editor and in 1972 its second ombudsman as a representative of the readers.

Just months after the publication of the Pentagon Papers Ben Bagdikian became an undercover inmate at the Huntingdon State Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in Pennsylvania, to expose the harsh prison conditions.

Ben Bagdikian remained there for six days and his eight-part series on the conditions of the prison were published in the Post from January 29 to February 6,1972.

Ben Bagdikian wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review from 1972 to 1974.

Ben Bagdikian taught at University of California, Berkeley from 1976 until his retirement in 1990.

Ben Bagdikian taught courses such as Introduction to Journalism and Ethics in Journalism.

Ben Bagdikian was the dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism from 1985 to 1988.

In 1987 Ben Bagdikian testified on the effects of profit on news reporting before the House Energy Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, along with economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

Ben Bagdikian wrote that some 50 corporations controlled what most people in the United States read and watched.

Ben Bagdikian was a founding member of the grassroots network Armenians for Nader.

Ben Bagdikian appeared on KPFK along with Serj Tankian and Peter Balakian on April 24,2005, to talk about the Armenian Genocide.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation had a 200-page file on Ben Bagdikian spanning from 1951 to 1971.

Ben Bagdikian has made snide remarks relative to" FBI director J Edgar Hoover and "some of his work has been described [specifically, by Hoover] as 'utter bunk'.

McChesney argued that Ben Bagdikian was "certainly accorded more respect by working journalists" than Herman and Chomsky, the authors of Manufacturing Consent, due to their perceived radicalism, in contrast to Ben Bagdikian's liberal views.

The Pentagon Papers controversy at The Washington Post was recounted in the Steven Spielberg film The Post, where Ben Bagdikian was played by Bob Odenkirk.

Ben Bagdikian received honorary degrees, among others, from Brown University, Clark University, Berkeley Citation from University of California, Berkeley, University of Rhode Island.

Ben Bagdikian was the commencement speaker of the 1972 Journalism Convocation of Northwestern University.

Ben Bagdikian was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame on October 30,2016.