General Info

About John Hamer JOHN HAMER is President of the Washington News Council, an independent forum for media fairness that he co-founded in 1998. The WNC is a nonprofit 501c3 citizens organization whose mission is to help maintain trust and confidence in the news media in Washington State by promoting fairness, accuracy and balance. Hamer was formerly Associate Editorial-Page Editor at The Seattle Times and previously Associate Editor with Congressional Quarterly/Editorial Research Reports in Washington, D.C. After leaving The Times, Hamer became senior fellow at Discovery Institute and co-authored International Seattle: Creating a Globally Competitive Community. He also freelanced for publications including Washington CEO magazine and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He later became co-editor of CounterPoint, a monthly media-critique newsletter, and co-authored the bi-weekly Watchdogs media column in Seattle Weekly and Eastsideweek. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and has a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University. HEIDI DIETRICH has worked as a journalist and writer for the past decade. She began blogging for the Washington News Council in spring 2010. Read more about Heidi or read Heidi's blog posts.