JOHN HAMER is President and Executive Director of the Washington News Council, an independent forum for media ethics 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, balance, transparency, accountability and openness. 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. He lives on Mercer Island with his wife, Mariana Parks, plus two Labrador retrievers and two cats.