Sunday, September 22, 2013

Research Report on Russ Baker


The Squeeze, written by Russ Baker, focuses on the concerns of ad agencies interfering with the content of the news mediums they appear in. The article was published by in 1997 by the Columbia Journalism Review.  

Russ Baker has been an investigative journalist for over two decades producing stories for various news sources including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Esquire Magazine, the Village Voice, the Nation and Vanity Fair. Baker attended the University of California LA where he graduated with a BA in Political Science. In 1988 Baker obtained his masters degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Early in his career Baker covered stories on the Hutu-Tutsi Massacres in Burundi, the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany and the Romanian revolutions under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. Baker later covered stories on the attack and collapse of the World Trade Center, the military record of George W. Bush, and the war in Iraq. 

In 1989 Baker worked as a New York correspondent for the Christian Scientist Monitor where he produced a variety of investigative cover stories. In the 90’s Baker served as an adjunct faculty member for the University of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Baker has been a speaker at a variety of organizations, both public and private, and has also spoken at many colleges and universities. He has been interviewed many times on various radio stations and television shows. Baker has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and has served as a panelist at the National Conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Baker received the 2005 Deadline Club Award for the investigative reporting he did on then president George W. Bush’s military record.

Currently Baker’s focus is on promoting and editing his site WhoWhatWhy.com, an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan news site.

It seems that by writing for a variety of news sources with no apparent political lean, Baker cultivated for himself a nonpartisan image. Though his various stories, investigations, and awards Baker has certainly built up an impressive amount of credibility in his journalism career.

The only apparent motivation that Baker has had is to make journalism as purely truth seeking and unbiased as possible. The quality of journalism is something that Baker has evidently been passionate about in his career. An article about the control advertisers have over the content of the magazines or papers that their ads appear in is something that may be personal to Baker.

The Columbia Journalism Review, the publisher of Baker’s article, set’s high standards for their chosen content according to their site, www.cjr.org. The Review was founded by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1961 and claims to be the country’s prime journal of press comment and criticism.  

One online review of the article found stated that Baker’s article was well researched and did not question the author’s credibility for writing the article. With credible sources in Russ Baker and the Columbia Journalism Review, I must conclude that this article exemplifies unbiased, investigative journalism at its finest.

Sources: 
http://russbaker.com/
      http://whowhatwhy.com/author/russ-baker/
      www.cjr.com


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