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Hamilton, John Maxwell, and Robert Mann, eds. A Journalist's Diplomatic Mission: Ray Stannard Baker's World War I Diary. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 504 pp. $49.95.
Ray Stannard Baker is best known to media historians as one of the first muckraking journalists in McClure's magazine and to presidential historians as an early writer and compiler of the life and work of President Woodrow Wilson. What's less known about Baker is that he also worked secretly for the U.S. State Department in several European countries during the last months of World War I. When the war ended in November 1918 he stayed in Europe to handle press affairs during the Paris Peace Conferences. Ihe diary he kept during these experiences is published in book form for the first time in A Journalist's Diplomatic Mission: Ray Stannard Baker's World War I Diary. The first half of the diary covers the war period; the second half covers the peace negotiations. Ihe diary spans March 1, 1918, to July 9, 1919.
Baker's initial 1918 mission to gather information about public support for the war on behalf of the U.S. government would raise serious questions today under modern codes of journalism ethics....