Producer, pundit, and media critic Jeff Cohen offers a fast-paced rompthrough the three major cable news channels - Fox, CNN, and MSNBC - and delivers a serious message about their failure to cover the most urgent issues of the day.

Propelled by hilarious anecdotes featuring celebrities, famous pundits and media personalities, Cable News Confidential highlights the foibles, hypocrisies, and absurdities he witnessed at news organizations run by entertainment conglomerates.

Jeff Cohen is the founder of FAIR, the progressive media watch group based in New York. He devolved from media critic to media pundit, appearing regularly on national TV - including as a co-host of Crossfire on CNN, a weekly panelist on Fox News and a daily commentator on MSNBC. He was senior producer of MSNBC’s Donahue until the show was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war. He is the co-author of a number of books, including Wizards of Media Oz and The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error.

Cohen’s columns have run in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, Miami Herald, Brill’s Content and The Nation. Prior to FAIR, he worked in Los Angeles as an ACLU lawyer. In 2003, he was communications director of the Kucinich for President campaign. He writes and lectures widely about media and politics, reachable through jeffcohen.org. He lives in upstate New York, where he helps raise two smart, beautiful daughters.

jeffcohen.org
fair.org

“With this deliciously funny exposé, Jeff Cohen can probably kiss his television career good-bye.
The rest of us, meanwhile, can celebrate his book and embrace him as one of America’s
sharpest and bravest pundits—in any medium!”
—Barbara Ehrenreich

“Jeff Cohen has given us a lively, funny, serious, and ultimately devastating look at the corporate
media, which he had a unique opportunity to observe from the inside. When future historians
search for a description of the major media in our time, they will have his book as a primary
source.”
—Howard Zinn

“Jeff Cohen’s dissection of cable TV news is both irresistibly funny and civically painful. It goes
from uproarious anecdotes to those that make you wince. Must read.”
—Molly Ivins

Publishers Weekly
Reviewed 2006-10-16

“Author Who Gives a Damn”
by Marcia Kuntz and Jamison Foser, Media Matters

Cable News: Hazardous to the Republic
Jason Salzman, Minuteman Media, 9/6/06