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The praise for Jeff Cohen's "misadventures in corporate media" are well deserved.

Cohen was well-equipped to take this modern day Gulliver's travels, since he founded FAIR, the first big-time progressive media watchdog group. Yes, FAIR was around even before the age of the Internet.

Because of his experience with media criticism, he ended up as a Cable News TV pundit, talking about -- what else -- the media. That led him on a journey through the 3 major cable TV news channels: MSNBC, CNN and FOX News. And this, you could say, is his tell-all book.

In fact, Cohen was a senior producer on the the Phil Donahue show when MSNBC canceled it because the Iraq War was coming up -- and Donahue wasn't going with the flow of a pro-war message on television news. As Cohen writes, "When war came, most of corporate TV News did the FOX trot."

An internal NBC memo later revealed that the Cable execs were having heart attacks over the thought of anyone expressing an anti-Iraq war view on MSNBC. The NBC management report warned of Donahue's program that it would become "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

By the time he said Sayonara to television, Cohen had come to the conclusion: "Cable news has become a downwardly spiraling circle: three dogs chasing each other's tails to the right."

Now, Cohen is an independent advocate for media reform, continuing to champion the motto of the organization he founded, FAIR: "Don't take the media lying down."

Well said.





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