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THE DEMISE AND REBIRTH OF AMERICAN MEDIA...AND DEMOCRACY

Jeff Cohen is the founding director of Ithaca College’s Center for Independent Media and an associate professor of journalism. In 1986, he founded FAIR, the national media watch group based in New York.

Cohen appears regularly on national television and radio. He’s been a daily contributor on MSNBC, a weekly panelist on Fox News and a co-host of CNN's "Crossfire." He has been a guest on such programs and outlets as "Larry King Live," "Today," "Hardball," C-SPAN and NPR. He was senior producer at MSNBC's Phil Donahue show, until it was terminated for political reasons weeks before the invasion of Iraq. In 2003, he was Communications Director of the Kucinich for President campaign.

In Cohen’s latest book, Cable News Confidential, readers learn why television news has become a national joke and a nightly Jon Stewart punch line. The book offers a fast-paced romp through CNN, Fox and MSNBC, illuminating what's comical and what's tragic in today’s corporate media. Few critics have been afforded an intimate, on-the-job view of the outlets they condemn. Cohen founded FAIR in 1986 and in the ensuing years, ended up a paid pundit on all three cable “news” channel. While books have been written by journalists who grew disillusioned with TV news, Cohen was never "illusioned." He was a skeptic all along – with his antenna alert to the foibles of television news in the clutches of entertainment conglomerates.

But Cohen is not just a media critic. In this era of new communications technologies and the Internet, he’s become an evangelist for independent media and the new clout of maverick journalists and entrepreneurs. “Today, independents are breaking stories, making news, provoking Congressional hearings on topics that big corporate media have censored or ignored,” he says. ”Independent outlets online and off are reshaping journalism and politics.”

In just a few years, news/politics blogs have attracted huge audiences, and bloggers have won prestigious journalism awards. Says Cohen: “Millions of independent-minded people – exiles from corporate media and its jingoism, tabloidism, irrelevance – have found alternative sources of information. Independent media are rejuvenating democracy by providing news and diverse views to the most engaged sectors of our public, including young people.”

Jeff Cohen has lectured at over 200 campuses from community colleges to Ivy League schools to historically black colleges to most University of California branches. In 1999, he was the Marsh Visiting Lecturer in Communication Studies at the University of Michigan.

Cohen is a columnist whose pieces have been published on major independent websites (HuffingtonPost, CommonDreams, Alternet, etc) and in dozens of leading dailies, including USA Today, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.

Jeff is the author or co-author of five books:

-- Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media (2006)

-- Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News (1997)

-- The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error (1995)

-- Through the Media Looking Glass: Decoding Bias & Blather in the News (1995)

-- Adventures in Medialand: Behind the News, Beyond the Pundits (1993)

He also contributed to Robert Greenwald's hit critical documentary, OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.

Jeff Cohen can bring your campus the inside scoop on what journalism has morphed into in today's Post-Modern, Post 1984, Post 9/11 world.