Jeff Cohen’s Message Clear: Don’t Trust Big Corporate Media

[babylonsister]

Jeff Cohen’s Message Clear: Don’t Trust Big Corporate Media
by Christina Rohn


The message from Jeff Cohen’s lecture Tuesday at North Central Michigan College was clear — “You can’t trust the big corporate media.”

Cohen, who in 1986 founded Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a national media watch group that documents media bias and censorship, talked to a crowd of about 375 in NCMC’s Student Center Cafeteria about what he called his “misadventures” in the mass media.

Throughout his broadcast journalism career, Cohen worked for CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and likened his rise and fall in broadcasting to the story Alice In Wonderland.

“Alice fell into a rabbit hole and I fell into the muck of 24/7 news,” he said.

Cohen explained to audience members that, because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, large entertainment companies such as Time Warner, Viacom and Disney have been able to take over many of the country’s news outlets, therefore inserting their own code of ethics and bias into the national news.

He said that true journalism has been blocked by these corporations because they are protecting their special interests, and as a result, instead of hearing about the important world issues, the public is saturated with news about “Britney Spears and her sister.”

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/13/7656/

[Binka]

1. I Saw Jeff In Berkeley He Is GREAT!

Telecommunications Act? Thank Bill.