Aaron Glantz (born August 10, 1977) is a
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
-winning radio, print and television journalist who produces public interest stories. His reporting has sparked more than a dozen Congressional hearings, a raft of federal legislation and led to criminal probes by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission. Because of his reporting, 500,000 fewer U.S. military veterans face long waits for disability compensation, while 100,000 fewer veterans are prescribed highly addictive narcotics by the government.
He is also the author of three books, most recently “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans" (UC Press), the first book to systematically document the government's failure to care for soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Glantz has reported across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. His work has appeared in a broad range of media outlets, including ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ABC News,
NPR
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
and the PBS NewsHour.
In 2016, he was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, studying innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership in journalism.
Career
In November 2002, when the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq appeared imminent, Glantz traveled to Istanbul to cover regional reaction to the crisis. When
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...
was overthrown on April 9, 2003, Glantz traveled to Baghdad as an unembedded journalist to cover Iraqi experience of
U.S. occupation. He spent parts of three years in the county, covering the
Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib (; ar, أبو غريب, ''Abū Ghurayb'') is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road t ...
prison scandal, the attack on radical cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr
Muqtada al-Sadr ( ar, مقتدى الصدر, Muqtadā aṣ-Ṣadr; born 4 August 1974) is an Iraqi politician and militia leader. He is the leader of the Sadrist Movement and the leader of the Peace Companies, a successor to the militia he had p ...
, and the April 2004 U.S. military siege of
Fallujah
Fallujah ( ar, ٱلْفَلُّوجَة, al-Fallūjah, Iraqi pronunciation: ) is a city in the Iraqi province of Al Anbar, located roughly west of Baghdad on the Euphrates. Fallujah dates from Babylonian times and was host to important Jew ...
. He also spent considerable time reporting in the
Kurdistan
Kurdistan ( ku, کوردستان ,Kurdistan ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, Kurdish la ...
region of Northern Iraq.
Since returning from his last visit to Iraq, Glantz has devoted considerable attention to the damaging effects of the war on American
veteran
A veteran () is a person who has significant experience (and is usually adept and esteemed) and expertise in a particular occupation or field. A military veteran is a person who is no longer serving in a military.
A military veteran that has ...
s focusing on the difficulties that veterans have experienced in their efforts to obtain services from the
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers a ...
.
He has worked at the
Center for Investigative Reporting
The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) is a nonprofit news organization based in Emeryville, California. It was founded in 1977 as the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization, and has since grown into a multi-platf ...
since 2012, when it merged with The Bay Citizen, a non-profit media outlet that produced the Bay Area pages of ''The New York Times''. Before joining The Bay Citizen in October 2010, Glantz spent a year at
New America Media
New America Media (NAM) was a multimedia ethnic news agency and a coalition of ethnic media. Founded in 1996 by the nonprofit Pacific News Service, NAM was headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, ...
, the ethnic media newswire, when he covered the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (better known as the stimulus). At New America Media, Glantz also administered a national fellowship program for ethnic media journalists covering the stimulus and conducted investigative journalism trainings in eight cities as partnership with Pro Publica and Investigative Reporters and Editors.
During the course of his career, Glantz has also reported internationally in a dozen countries across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Awards and fellowships
Glantz's reporting has been honored with numerous awards, including a George Foster Peabody Award, two Military Reporters and Editors awards, and an award for from the Online News Association. He also received a national investigative reporting award from the
Society of Professional Journalists
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States. It was established on April 17, 1909, at DePauw University,2009 SPJ Annual Report, letter ...
for his coverage of veterans' suicides. and was nominated for a national News and Documentary Emmy Award for his reporting on narcotics.
He has been a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the
Carter Center
The Carter Center is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. He and his wife Rosalynn Carter partnered with Emory University just after his defeat in the 1980 United States presidenti ...
, a DART Center Fellow for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University Journalism School, and a fellow at the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media and Columbia University Teachers College.
In 2011, the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the legislative body within the government of the City and County of San Francisco.
Government and politics
The City and County of San Francisco is a consolidated city-county, being simultaneously a c ...
issued a proclamation to honor to Glantz for his "extraordinary efforts as a critically acclaimed author... who through word and deed is saving lives."
Books on the Iraq War
In 2005 Aaron Glantz published his book ''How America Lost Iraq'' (Tarcher/Penguin), in which he gives a voice to the Iraqis and tells how the U.S. government squandered, through a series of blunders and brutalities, the goodwill with which most Iraqis greeted the American invasion and the elation they felt at the fall of Saddam Hussein.
In 2008 the book ''Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan'' (Haymarket) was published edited by Glantz in collaboration with
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is an advocacy group of formerly active-duty United States military personnel, Iraq War veterans, Afghanistan War veterans, and other veterans who have served since the September 11, 2001 attacks; who were oppos ...
. The book dovetails with the
Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan event detailing allegations of military misconduct among U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
In 2009, Glantz published "The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle Against America's Veterans" (UC Press), the first book to systematically document the government's failure to care for returning soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Personal life
Glantz lives in San Francisco with his wife, journalist Ngoc Nguyen and their two children. His father is
Stanton Glantz, Ph.D, a leading researcher and activist on the
health effects of tobacco
Tobacco use has predominantly negative effects on human health and concern about health effects of tobacco has a long history. Research has focused primarily on cigarette smoking.
Tobacco smoke contains more than 70 chemicals that cause can ...
.
He is a third-generation San Franciscan.
Bibliography
* ''How America Lost Iraq''
* ''Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan''
* ''The War Comes Home''
* ''Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream'', Custom House, 2019.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Glantz, Aaron
American radio reporters and correspondents
American male journalists
American alternative journalists
American investigative journalists
American war correspondents
American people of the Iraq War
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
Journalists from the San Francisco Bay Area
Pacifica Foundation people
University of California, Berkeley alumni
People from San Francisco
1977 births
Living people