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

Amiable but diffuse, this collection of reminiscences by one of the country's best-known media critics intrigues in places but also leaves the reader wanting more. Bagdikian (The Media Monopoly), former dean of the UC Berkeley journalism school, begins with an account of his cloak-and-dagger acquisition of the Pentagon Papers for the Washington Post and the in-house debate about publishing them, then skates over his career, which began at the Springfield Morning Union in Massachusetts. ``Journalists are both insiders and outsiders,'' he states, buttressing his title, and large chunks of the book consist of family tales. His Armenian family survived a Turkish massacre; that experience stirred his father's patriotism and scarred their collective memory; other relatives helped Bagdikian learn to ``view events from the bottom.'' The author makes good points along the way--suggesting that news is influenced less by liberalism than by business conservatism--but his rich life and career could have produced a deeper valedictory. (Aug.)