Double Vision: Reflections on My Heritage, Life, and Profession

Strong evidence of the seductive power of the establishment press is that few folks who've worked in it at a level of real responsibility ever leave, much less leave to become press critics. A notable exception is Ben Bagdikian, who after rising through the ranks of several papers to become assistant managing editor of the Washington Post chucked it all to become a journalism professor. While in that job he produced a trenchant, prescient book about the rise of the media conglomerate, The Media Monopoly. Double Vision, as the title suggests, is really two projects: one, an autobiography; the other, the updating of Bagdikian's take on various journalistic behaviors and problems. Both agendas work because Bagdikian has had an interesting life and continues to have interesting ideas. So in this book we are entertained by tales of the Army Air Corps in World War II and of working on the Pentagon Papers, and are instructed by a cogent critique of the way the big papers (don't) cover big business.