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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Jeff Cohen on the weird and disturbing world of CNN, Fox, and MSNBC In his new book, Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media (PoliPointPress), Jeff Cohen writes about his years with the cable news channels as a pilgrim who’s returned from a strange and hostile land. The founder of the left-liberal media-watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), Cohen was invariably miscast. Oddly enough, he calls his stint at Fox his happiest: it was easier to work with out-and-out conservatives than with executives at CNN and MSNBC, who lived in constant fear that they would be accused of liberal bias. Cohen left Fox for what he thought would be a dream job: working as senior producer for his friend and fellow progressive Phil Donahue, who bucked the conservative trend by landing a show on MSNBC in 2002. With the war in Iraq drawing closer, Cohen writes about terrified “Suits” pushing the program to the right, alienating its liberal audience while failing to attract new viewers. Donahue’s minuscule ratings were, nevertheless, higher than those of any other MSNBC show when it was canceled in early 2003. Cohen describes cable news’ flaws as “a drunken exuberance for sex, crime and celebrity stories, matched by a grim timidity and fear of offending the powers-that-be — especially if the powers-that-be are conservatives.” (Better yet, he calls Ann Coulter “something of a cross between Joan Rivers and Eva Braun.”) He discussed the state of cable news in a recent interview. An edited transcript follows. You make a strong case for how dysfunctional the three cable news channels are. But how will your book reach anyone who doesn’t already agree with you? Once it gets around — especially at MSNBC, and somewhat at Fox and CNN — I suspect that people will be passing it to each other. Reporters and producers are very thin-skinned and self-absorbed. By the time I left Fox, it had a lot of esprit de corps. There was a lot of, “Wow, we’re on the march, we’re happening.” And spirits were higher. Of course I didn’t know that O’Reilly was making lewd phone calls. He didn’t make any to you? No, he sure did not. But then I got over to MSNBC, and it was complete backbiting and gossiping and it was just not a healthy environment. And I assume that this book will get passed around there, and a little bit at CNN. I’ve got some good stuff in there on Fox, too. I don’t think people have to agree with my political outlook, especially the insiders, to want to thumb through this. I assume the index is going to be worked over. The three channels have nine hours of prime-time programming each night, 8 to 11 pm. Yet only Anderson Cooper’s show, on CNN, is an actual newscast. What should we make of that? It’s cost. I think it’s real cheap to have hosts and pundits pontificate. It’s more expensive to have reporters out in the field. These three channels that you’re referring to are profit-making concerns first, and actual news is expensive. I think it’s Fox that really transformed the environment. Hot air is cheap. As you yourself point out, the cable nets’ audiences are tiny compared to the network evening news. NPR’s audience is huge, too. So why should we worry about cable? I see cable as an agenda-setter. You’re right, it’s got a relatively tiny audience, but a lot of journalists watch it. A lot of media professionals watch it. A lot of political operatives watch it. So it sets an agenda for the political class of who’s important, who’s got a strong voice and who doesn’t. And what are the important issues. It’s on all day, so it’s easy even for busy members of the political class to tune in. So I think it has an impact on that political class, and it makes it far more important than the few million people watching it. GE still owns MSNBC, but its new golden boy seems to be Keith Olbermann, a liberal. Doesn’t this suggest that TV executives will go with whatever works? I wish. Do I wish. I’d still be there. I’d be rich and powerful. And famous. I like Keith. I liked him years and years ago. I’ve never met the guy. I like his persona. Obviously others do, too. I like his smarts, I like his whimsy, and lately, obviously, he’s pandering to my political sensibilities as well as the next guy’s. Phil was a passionate, progressive voice when Bush was high in the ratings and the war was coming. Olbermann is now on where Bush is low in the ratings and the war is sinking. I know it’s only been four years, but it feels like twenty. The times have changed a lot. We could have had a show with aggressive, articulate, passionate people saying things on national TV seen nowhere else. And it would have happened night after night. This was the time that independent, smart, active news consumers were turning away from the mainstream and looking for alternatives. MoveOn was doubling its size during this time, and we were being muzzled. We could have been an alternative in the mainstream. The best of both worlds. And our ratings would have climbed. But MSNBC management’s main preoccupation then wasn’t how to get ratings, it was how to tamp down the content. And one thing that irritated them was the guests that we had. Olbermann’s guest list is often semi-conventional. It was conveyed to me repeatedly, day after day: “Phil’s badgering, he’s coming across as angry.” Keep in mind that we were up against a show — O’Reilly’s show, in that very time slot — and we were being told that anger and passion somehow isn’t going to get audience. They didn’t care about audience. They cared more about muzzling the show. I almost could feel for management, that they couldn’t do what was good journalism. In our case they couldn’t even do what was good for ratings. And they were saying things to me that I felt they knew were silly. I could look them in the eye sometimes and say, this isn’t the guy talking to me. This is someone else in this dysfunctional ownership/management situation. Do you think there’s an audience for a channel that would be as far to the left as Fox News is to the right? I think it would take off. Look at Web sites like Crooks and Liars. Look what’s getting passed around on YouTube. If there was something that was kicking out that kind of information, independent commentary taking on the administration’s distortions and lies in real time, then you wouldn’t have to wait for it the next day and see what happened. You’d know what channel on the dial to go to. I think it would absolutely boom, and boom overnight. In terms of viewers — that’s the question you asked me. Sponsors are always a problem. If you’re counterprogramming against Fox, if you’re as progressive as they’re conservative, you would have sponsor-flight issues. You would have conservatives pressuring corporate sponsors: “Do you know what you’re sponsoring? You sponsored an investigation of sweatshops that named your company.” That’s one of the issues that has always been a subtle background issue in American TV news. It would become a foreground issue if someone was really doing independent reporting and commentary about the economic realities of our country and our world. What’s the best show on cable news right now? You know how many times in the book where I said something nice about cable news, I said, “That’s another high jump over a low hurdle”? I did that so often that the publisher came to me once and said, 'Jeff, we want to make the book “High Jumps over Low Hurdles: My Misadventures in Cable News.” I’m glad we didn’t go for it.'" I’ve got to tell you, it’s high jumps over low hurdles. There’s not much there. I watch a lot of it. Obviously the thing that’s not a high jump over a low hurdle — it’s soaring into the stratosphere in terms of quality — is Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. They’re so brilliant, sometimes I’m on the verge of tears. They’re doing media criticism of the highest order — especially Stewart, and of course Colbert in his speech that so offended the Washington press corps. Any serious media critic has to be in love with those shows, and certainly millions of other people are. The two standouts on cable, and perhaps the two best in news/media criticism shows, are on Comedy Central. It’s hard to find anything to speak highly about. Well, let me give you something that will be a very high hurdle. What’s the worst show on cable news? That’s tough because there are so many candidates. I mean, Glenn Beck is insane. It’s almost psychopathic. He wasn’t on national TV during Iraq, so it’s as if he wants to forget everything that happened, and he’s doing it for Iran. It’s like, “Goddamn it, I missed the Iraq go-round, where I could have spouted my ignorant mouthings about a region of the world I have no clue about, and attack the officials of both parties for not getting in there fast enough. And damn it, I’m going to do it for Iran.” Night after night. He’s got to be high up there. Obviously what’s-her-name, Grace. How about the three major cable stations? The worst. God, that’s tough. I watch O’Reilly, and, you know, he can be so wrong, he can turn reality upside-down with such skill, 180 degrees wrong. But he puts on such a fast show. It’s one of the worst shows in terms of demagoguery, but in terms of, like, pace, it’s one of the best shows. Hannity & Colmes drives me nuts, but I’ve got to be honest with you: I haven’t seen it for a couple years. In a sense, it’s the absolute worst because of the pure fraud, the fraud in advertising. That’s got to be up there high. I’ll turn it on for two minutes to see if Alan’s doing anything. “Well, Sean — do we have to call names?” Instead of ever countering an idea with an idea. So that’s got to be down there among the worst. Tucker Carlson used to just rattle my cage. Scarborough used to drive me crazy — just a bad imitator of O’Reilly. And there’s one other I wanted to mention. Oh, let me stop there. What do you make of the revamped CBS Evening News with Katie Couric so far? I’ve only seen a few minutes here and there. I’m glad to see changes made to the format, but I can’t trust anything that goes on in corporate TV news today. You close your book by praising independent media such as Air America Radio and progressive Web sites like http://MoveOn.org. Air America gets not so much praise as my being happy that it exists. Other things get praise. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! gets praise. What’s your next act? Are you going to be part of this new movement? I would like to be part of the Real News, which I write about in the epilogue. Their goal is to take the model of the Howard Dean campaign and http://MoveOn.org and see if they can get tens of thousands of people to pay $50 for an independent channel that would give news and commentary that you can’t get in the US. The goal is to eliminate any government money and any corporate money. My dream has always been to work with a truly independent TV channel that allowed differing views but was focused on journalism and challenging the powers that be, including the economic ones. Jeff Cohen will appear at Brown University on Wednesday, September 27, at a time and place to be announced. He will appear with Jimmy Tingle at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater, in Somerville, on Thursday, September 28, at 7:30 pm. For more information, go to http://www.takeonthemedia.org .
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