Jeff Cohen is a journalist, media critic and founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. In 1986, he founded the media watch group FAIR. His latest book is "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media". He was an on-air commentator (and "Donahue" senior producer) at MSNBC in 2002-2003; a weekly "News Watch" panelist on Fox News Channel from 1997 to 2002: a co-host of CNN's "Crossfire" in 1996. His columns have been published in dozens of dailies, including USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Newsday and Atlanta Constitution. He was a columnist at Brill's Content. In the mid-1990s, he co-wrote the nationally syndicated "Media Beat" column (with Norman Solomon). In 2003, he was the communications director of the Kucinich for President campaign.
My Visit to a London Embassy Under Threat
London -- On Friday, I visited Ecuador's embassy here in the capital of the former British empire and saw a building surrounded by a phalanx of cops, with several of them at the front door. The embassy is in an upscale neighborhood near Harrods department store. The intimidating police presence ...
2012 and Beyond: Progressive Election Strategy and the Norman Solomon Campaign
We can't devise a successful electoral strategy for "The Left" -- meaning the forces of peace, social/economic justice and sustainability -- unless we face a simple fact: We're getting our asses kicked. For three decades, our country's politics have moved steadily rightward and become more corporate-dominated. With few exceptions (gay ...
Obama, Sarkozy and Taxing Wall Street
With U.S. media obsessing on the fight here at home among conservatives vying to become president, most of them missed some big news about France, which already has a conservative president. This week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would take the lead -- even go it alone within ...
Mainstream Reporters: Too Close to the Field and Teams to Get the Debt Story
If you were a spectator in a sky box seat looking directly down on the Washington debt debate, you’d be seeing a contest both narrow and off to one edge of the field -- like watching a football game being played entirely between the 10-yard line and the goal line.The ...
Obama is NOT “Caving” to Corporate Interests
In a campaign almost as frenzied as the effort to get Barack Obama into the White House, liberal groups are now mobilizing against the White House and reported deals that would cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. They accuse President Obama of being weak and willing to “cave” to ...
The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV
It's become a TV ritual: Every year on April 4, as Americans commemorate Martin Luther King's death, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader." The remarkable thing about these reviews of King's life is that several years — his last years — are totally missing, ...
Will ABC News’ “Made in America” Series Avoid Their Boss, Disney?
This weekend ABC News heavily promoted its special “Made in America” series that will run all week. From the promotions, it looks like the series will focus partly on what happens when a household seeks to remove all furnishings and other items from its home that are not made in ...
Fear Extreme Islamists in the Arab World? Blame Washington
In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. questioned U.S. military interventions against progressive movements in the Third World by invoking a JFK quote: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Were he alive to witness the last three decades of U.S. foreign ...
President NAFTA Backs President SHAFTA
It was a stunning spectacle yesterday afternoon when former President Clinton took the podium from President Obama in the White House briefing room to help shove the Obama-GOP tax deal down the throats of Democratic activists and Congress members. It was a fitting spectacle too (carried live on CNN) -- ...
Colbert Annoys Press Corps ... Again
Let's face it: Some in the Washington press corps still resent Stephen Colbert because he so brilliantly lampooned them to their faces at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner over their coziness with the Bush White House. Yesterday, some elite journalists couldn't contain their anger after Colbert testified before Congress ...
I knew Christine O’Donnell as an ideologue of uptightness -- with a fervent position on every issue under the sun. I saw her up close when we debated during one of her several Phil Donahue show appearances in 2002-03 on MSNBC, where I worked as an on-air contributor and Donahue ...
Colbert 1, U.S. State Department 0
A few weeks ago on the Colbert Report, an amazing moment occurred when Stephen Colbert raised a major social issue that U.S. mainstream media assiduously ignore: the huge U.S. prison population. The issue quickly disappeared due to the apparent ignorance of Colbert's guest: Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, in ...
WikiLeaks: Time to Celebrate, Time to Mourn
It's time to celebrate. It's a big win for Internet-based indy media that WikiLeaks.org posted its "Afghan War Diary," which is based on 90,000 leaked U.S. military records and details a failing war in which U.S. and allied forces have repeatedly killed innocent civilians. This on-the-ground material is vaster than ...
We Won a Robust Public Option ... on College Loans
We won!When President Obama signs the health care reconciliation bill on Tuesday, we can crow about a robust public option -- en route perhaps to a more inclusive, cost-effective single-payer system. Soon, private profiteers (and subsidies to them) will be sidelined, and the government will save taxpayers billions by providing ...
Get Ready for the Obama/GOP Alliance
With President Obama pushing a huge troop escalation in Afghanistan, history may well repeat itself with a vengeance. And it's not just the apt comparison to LBJ, who destroyed his presidency on the battlefields of Vietnam with an escalation that delivered power to Nixon and the GOP. There's another frightening ...
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August 19th, 2012
My Visit to a London Embassy Under Threat
London -- On Friday, I visited Ecuador's embassy here in the capital of the former British empire and saw a building surrounded by a phalanx ...
May 7th, 2012
2012 and Beyond: Progressive Election Strategy and the Norman Solomon Campaign
We can't devise a successful electoral strategy for "The Left" -- meaning the forces of peace, social/economic justice and sustainability -- unless we face a ...
January 11th, 2012
Obama, Sarkozy and Taxing Wall Street
With U.S. media obsessing on the fight here at home among conservatives vying to become president, most of them missed some big news about France, ...
July 30th, 2011
Mainstream Reporters: Too Close to the Field and Teams to Get the Debt Story
If you were a spectator in a sky box seat looking directly down on the Washington debt debate, you’d be seeing a contest both narrow ...
July 25th, 2011
Obama is NOT “Caving” to Corporate Interests
In a campaign almost as frenzied as the effort to get Barack Obama into the White House, liberal groups are now mobilizing against the White ...
April 4th, 2011
The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV
It's become a TV ritual: Every year on April 4, as Americans commemorate Martin Luther King's death, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the ...
February 27th, 2011
Will ABC News’ “Made in America” Series Avoid Their Boss, Disney?
This weekend ABC News heavily promoted its special “Made in America” series that will run all week. From the promotions, it looks like the series ...
July 25th, 2011
Obama is NOT “Caving” to Corporate Interests
In a campaign almost as frenzied as the effort to get Barack Obama into the White House, liberal groups are now mobilizing against the White ...
September 25th, 2010
Colbert Annoys Press Corps ... Again
Let's face it: Some in the Washington press corps still resent Stephen Colbert because he so brilliantly lampooned them to their faces at the 2006 ...
July 30th, 2011
Mainstream Reporters: Too Close to the Field and Teams to Get the Debt Story
If you were a spectator in a sky box seat looking directly down on the Washington debt debate, you’d be seeing a contest both narrow ...
January 11th, 2012
Obama, Sarkozy and Taxing Wall Street
With U.S. media obsessing on the fight here at home among conservatives vying to become president, most of them missed some big news about France, ...
November 25th, 2009
Get Ready for the Obama/GOP Alliance
With President Obama pushing a huge troop escalation in Afghanistan, history may well repeat itself with a vengeance. And it's not just the apt comparison ...
August 24th, 2010
Colbert 1, U.S. State Department 0
A few weeks ago on the Colbert Report, an amazing moment occurred when Stephen Colbert raised a major social issue that U.S. mainstream media assiduously ...
September 16th, 2010
I knew Christine O’Donnell as an ideologue of uptightness -- with a fervent position on every issue under the sun. I saw her up close ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
