Jeff Cohen (media critic)

Jeff Cohen is a journalist, media critic, professor, and the founder of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group in the US. He was formerly a lawyer for the ACLU and authored or co-authored five books that criticize media bias, mainly written with Norman Solomon. He was a regular commentator for Fox News Channel's Fox News Watch, for MSNBC and CNN, and appears in Outfoxed, a documentary critical of Fox News.

Biography

Cohen grew up in Detroit and did undergraduate study at the University of Michigan. He studied law at the Peoples College of Law in Los Angeles and was admitted to the California Bar in 1981. Cohen then worked as a journalist in the L.A. area and after law school was a lawyer for the ACLU. Cohen founded FAIR in 1986 and subsequently served as executive director and on the board of directors.

In 2002 Cohen left FAIR to work full-time for MSNBC as senior producer of Phil Donahue's show, Donahue.^[1] Previously, he briefly co-hosted CNN's Crossfire in 1996 and was a regular panelist on FNC's Fox News Watch from 1997 to 2002. Cohen had also been a return commentator at multiple networks.

In 2008, Cohen became the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College where he is an associate professor in the journalism department. He additionally lectures across the country. He was Communications Director for the Kucinich presidential campaign in 2003. Cohen, with Norman Solomon, wrote the "Media Beat" column syndicated in newspapers across the US, wrote occasionally commentaries in various newspapers, and wrote a column for Brill's Content. He also has written investigative pieces for Rolling Stone, New Times, The Nation, Mother Jones, and other publications.^[2] In 2006, Cohen became a volunteer journalist for OpEdNews and has since contributed over 50 articles.^[3]

Books

• Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media (2006) ISBN 978-0-9760621-6-5
• Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News (1997) (with Norman Solomon)
• Through the Media Looking Glass: Decoding Bias and Blather in the News (1995) (with Norman Solomon) ISBN 978-1-56751-049-2
• The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error (1995) (with Steve Rendall and Jim Naureckas) ISBN 978-1-56584-260-1
• Adventures in Medialand: Behind the News, Beyond the Pundits (1993) (with Norman Solomon) ISBN 978-1-56751-015-7

References

External links

• Personal homepage
• Jeff Cohen at FAIR.org
• Jeff Cohen bio at Huffingtonpost
• Scott Ritter and Jeff Cohen addressed an audience of 250 in Sacramento, CA on 1/16/08, MP3
• Video: Jeff Cohen and Scott Ritter - U.S. Tour of Duty: The Iran Talks (January 14, 2008)
• 1 May 2011, 11 January 2009, 9 May 2004 interviews on Media Matters with Bob McChesney
• Jeff Cohen at the Internet Movie Database