Ben Bagdikian dans le film de Steven Spielberg : Pentagon Papers

En 1966, dans la province de Hau Nghia, au Viêtnam, Daniel Ellsberg, intégré aux troupes américaines, est observateur du conflit sur le terrain pour l'ambassade des Etats-Unis. Constatant que plusieurs présidents américains ont menti sur la situation du pays au Vitenam, Ellsberg décide 

de faire sortir clandestinement des dossiers confidentiels du département de la défense. En 1971, à Washington, Kay Graham, à la tête du Washington Post, tente de pérenniser la vie du journal, en difficultés financières.

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Ben-Hur Haig Bagdikian,^[5][6] born in Marash, Ottoman Empire, on January 30, 1920, was the fifth and youngest child of Aram Toros "Theodore" Bagdikian^[7] (1882−1957) and Dudeh "Daisy" Uvezian (1886−1923).^[8] He had four sisters.^[9] His mother's family was well-off, while his father came from a peasant family. He did graduate work at the American University of Beirut.^[7] The family was mostly based in Tarsus, where his father taught physics and chemistry at St. Paul's College in Tarsus, run by Boston Congregationalists.^[6][10][7] His family knew English well.^[11] His father also spoke Armenian, Turkish, Arabic, and learned the Biblical languages.^[12]

His family left Marash on February 9, 1920, just ten days after Ben was born. They left during the Armenian genocide,^[8] as Turkish forces reached the city, while the French retreated.^[13] While escaping persecution, Bagdikian was dropped in the snow in the mountains while the family was climbing. Only an infant, he was thought to be dead. He was picked up when he began to cry.^[5][14] They arrived, first, in Boston and subsequently settled in Stoneham, Massachusetts. His father was a pastor at several Armenian churches in the Boston area (in Watertown, Cambridge) and Worcester. He had taken courses at the Harvard Divinity School and had been ordained.^[15] When 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.^[6][16][17]

Bagdikian was known throughout his life as Ben, though his baptismal name was Ben-Hur, after the Christian-themed historical novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace.^[14] Bagdikian grew up during the Great Depression, which, according to Robert D. McFadden, enforced a "passion for social justice that shaped his reporting."^[8] He described himself as an "Armenian overlaid by, of all things, the culture of New England Yankee."^[14]

^{source : wikipedia}