Prof. Hackett has taught in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University since 1984. From 1993 to 2003, he co-directed NewsWatch Canada, a news media monitoring project based at SFU. Prof. Hackett is on the editorial board of Journalism Studies. He has conducted numerous media interviews and public talks, written policy briefs, and has helped to found several community-based media action and education initiatives, including Vancouver's annual Media Democracy Day.

He has written and co-authored numerous papers and chapters on media and politics, as well as several books, including:

• Robert A. Hackett and William K. Carroll, Remaking media: The struggle to democratize public communication (London & New York: Routledge, 2006)
• Democratizing Global Media: One World, Many Struggles (co-edited with Yuezhi Zhao) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)
• The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada's Press (with Richard Gruneau and Donald Gutstein, Timothy A. Gibson and NewsWatch Canada) (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives/Garamond Press, 2000)
• Robert A. Hackett and Yuezhi Zhao, Sustaining democracy? Journalism and the politics of objectivity (Toronto: Broadview Press [orig. Garamond], 1998).
• News and Dissent: The Press and the Politics of Peace in Canada (Ablex, 1991)