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The following is the transcript I made of a 12 minute telephone interview of Jeff Cohen, noted media critic,
JeffCohen.org
by Greg Gattine, host of The Morning Show on the local Independent Radio Station, WDST. Greg's show airs weekdays from 6:00 AM - 10:00 AM, and can be accessed online through the "morning show" link below.
http://wdst.com/morningshow.asp
The interview was broadcast this morning.
The details of the provenance of the interview appear at the end of the transcript.
I have tried to retain the spontaneous nature of the interview, which is, after all, a conversation, and so I have recorded the remarks as they were made, sans correction. Any absolutely necessary explanatory information appears in square brackets[ ].
It is an excellent, articulate, and informative interview.
Jeff Cohen Phone Interview with Greg Gattine on wdst.com
Part 1 of Two
Woodstock, New York December 6, 2006 9:16 to 9:28 AM (EST)
GREG GATTINE: Let's welcome Jeff Cohen, who has worked for CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. Is there anybody else that has worked for all three of these networks, Jeff? Anybody else you know of?
JEFF COHEN: You know what, it's such a small club, I suspect there are others that go from one to another. You know, they round up all the usual suspects, you never have a new voice. It's all...you have to be part of a tiny union I think.
GREG GATTINE: Yes. Did you get fired? Did you get the privilege of being fired by all these three?
JEFF COHEN: I was terminated by MSNBC three weeks before the invasion of Iraq because I was accurate about what would happen...
GREG GATTINE: Um-huh...
JEFF COHEN: ...and the ones who were wrong about what was going to happen in Iraq, they've seen their careers flourish in tv news. That's how it works.
FRANZ KAISIK (Greg's co-host on the Morning Show): Bizarre!
GREG GATTINE: Yes. And the folks who make all the mistakes usually get Presidential awards.
JEFF COHEN: That's right. That's how it works.
GREG GATTINE: ...and medals of honor and things like that.
JEFF COHEN: In media you just gain promotion. One of the hawkish hosts on MSNBC when I was there, he's the only one I know who's lost a show for getting it all wrong. Why-- because he's the General Manager of MSNBC, that's Dan Abrams.
GREG GATTINE:Ah..., oh,he doesn't...the Abrams Report isn't on MSNBC anymore?
JEFF COHEN: No, he's been kicked upstairs. He was so hawkish on the war...
GREG GATTINE: that's right...he's in charge now....
JEFF COHEN: ...but Phil Donohue, who was completely correct on what would happen, he got terminated.His prime time show was the most watched program on MSNBC, and it got terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasionand we know from memos that have leaked out, it was completely political, it was because of his stance on the war.
GREG GATTINE: You were the producer of that show?
JEFF COHEN: Senior producer.
GREG GATTINE: Senior producer of The Donohue Show, which I loved.
FRANZ KAISIK: I love Phil.
JEFF COHEN: Yeah, there were some great things happening there, but they kept muzzling us. You know, three months before the war began they gave us orders. Top management said, every time we booked a guest that was anti-war, we had to book two that were pro-war.
GREG GATTINE:(laughter)
FRANZ KAISIK: A two-to-one ratio....
GREG GATTINE:...and make sure the anti-war guy isn't that smart...
JEFF COHEN: If we booked two guests on the left, we had to have three on the right. [general laughter] In one meeting a producer suggested booking Michael Moore for a show, and she was told we'd have to have three right-wingers for ballast. [more general laughter]
GREG GATTINE: How is that a good business model when the top rated show, or one of the top-rated shows, is cancelled by the network?
JEFF COHEN: Again, it's not a business model. It was...at that point it was timidity and it was fear of offending the Bush Administratio. When the lobbyists for General Electric and all the other big media companies were going to the Federal Communications Commission with their hands out because they wanted the few remaining caps on ownership to be eliminated, so that the media titans could become even more titantic. And I think what the owners needed was conveyed to the top managers, and it's the only explanation I can come up with for why they were, as you say, for breaking all rules of how you grow a media business. You don't cancel your top show. It was purely political. It was about the war, and it was about not offending the Administration when General Electric, the owner of NBC -MSNBC -needed something from the administration.
GREG GATTINE: OK. Now the FCC is still debating the media ownership rules...of, course radio and television airwaves are owned by the people. Now you were at the big talk last week, and you're off to another one...I think the next one was down south somewhere, you said, Jeff?
JEFF COHEN: Yes, I think there's one other....the time remaining to comment to the FCC is December 21st. There is a place...it was so great in our community to see so many people who care about media diversity and de-monopolization....I mean, we live in a community where you have like, well, ClearChannel; they own 1200 radio stations across the country. They own about ten in our area beside the seven they own in Albany....you've got Cumulus owns a bunch in our area...There's very few independent broadcasters left, WDST is one that's locally owned. Studies show that if you're locally owned you care more about the community, you do more news about the community, you interview people in your community. These other stations are sort of canned, and they have programming from some other place, and I was impressed that so many hundreds of people from our community talked to the FCC. People can do that online now. If they want to directly e-mail the FCC, there's a website where you can write your own e-mail and it goes directly to the FCC. It's called Stop Big Media.
http://stopbigmedia.com/
GREG GATTINE: OK, we'll put that up on our website, too. Were you surprised that...Do you know Michael Kopps? Were you surprised that he's against this big conglomerate?
JEFF COHEN: Oh, yes. Michael Kopps is the ranking Democrat...there's three Republicans and two Democrats on the FCC. We dream of the day when there's a Democratic president who will make Michael Kopps the chairman of that commission. Kopps has been committed to a diverse media for years and years. He's one of the best FCC commissioners in decades, perhaps ever, and he's now in a minority, and he's the one who showed up to hear what people in our community had to tell him. The people that did this local...ah, that arranged this local hearing with our great congressman [Maurice] Hinchey, who's so good on de-monopolizing and diversifying media,
the group that set that up, the Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media:
http://www.re-media.org/
I think that if we could get more power to Kopps, if more people could write the FCC on their own views about the media, I think it gives him a little more power...it's how we stopped this from going through in 2003. 2003, right when the Iraq War was happening, when the Iraq War was coming. You had the media owners that thought they were going to - in secret, which is how media policy is always made: behind closed doors with the Federal Communications Commission - they thought they were going to get all the remaining caps loosened, all the rules that restricted anything, they were going to get those things blown away. They didn't count on about two or three million people e-mailing the FCC, crashing their computers, and stopping that process. We have to stop it again.
GREG GATTINE: Are FCC commissioners appointed for life?
JEFF COHEN: No, they're appointed I think for about four years, and then they're usually re-appointed. But the party that has the White House usually gets three commissioners and the minority party gets two commissioners. If there's a change in the White House in 2008, there's a good liklihood - especially if it's a decent Democrat - a good liklihood that Commissioner Kopps becomes head of the Commission. And that would really matter. I mean what we really need to do is not just stop the media from getting concentrated in even fewer hands. We need to go back to the old rules where there used to be a rule that said one individual or company in the whole country could only have seven TV licences, seven AM radio and seven FM radio. Now you have ClearChannel in our area, they own double that just in our own area. And there are just so many good things that a commission that was serving the public could do with the media. You know, the FCC was set up to protect the public from concentrated media power. What's happened since the Reagan era is that the FCC protects concentrated media power from the public.
GREG GATTINE: Yes, just the opposite....
JEFF COHEN: Right, and Commissioner Kopps is trying to go back to an FCC that really is serving the public. We have such new, great technology, if we had diverse ownership, imagine what our media could do in sponsoring debate, diverse culture, diverse music,...Greg, I think you're the last DJ...Didn't Tom Petty write that song about you?
end of part 1 of 2
The following is the transcript I made of a 12 minute telephone interview of Jeff Cohen, noted media critic,
JeffCohen.org
by Greg Gattine, host of The Morning Show on the local Independent Radio Station, WDST. Greg's show airs weekdays from 6:00 AM - 10:00 AM, and can be accessed online through the "morning show" link below.
http://wdst.com/morningshow.asp
The interview was broadcast this morning.
The details of the provenance of the interview appear at the end of the transcript.
I have tried to retain the spontaneous nature of the interview, which is, after all, a conversation, and so I have recorded the remarks as they were made, sans correction. Any absolutely necessary explanatory information appears in square brackets[ ].
It is an excellent, articulate, and informative interview.
Jeff Cohen Phone Interview with Greg Gattine on wdst.com
Part 1 of Two
Woodstock, New York December 6, 2006 9:16 to 9:28 AM (EST)
GREG GATTINE: Let's welcome Jeff Cohen, who has worked for CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. Is there anybody else that has worked for all three of these networks, Jeff? Anybody else you know of?
JEFF COHEN: You know what, it's such a small club, I suspect there are others that go from one to another. You know, they round up all the usual suspects, you never have a new voice. It's all...you have to be part of a tiny union I think.
GREG GATTINE: Yes. Did you get fired? Did you get the privilege of being fired by all these three?
JEFF COHEN: I was terminated by MSNBC three weeks before the invasion of Iraq because I was accurate about what would happen...
GREG GATTINE: Um-huh...
JEFF COHEN: ...and the ones who were wrong about what was going to happen in Iraq, they've seen their careers flourish in tv news. That's how it works.
FRANZ KAISIK (Greg's co-host on the Morning Show): Bizarre!
GREG GATTINE: Yes. And the folks who make all the mistakes usually get Presidential awards.
JEFF COHEN: That's right. That's how it works.
GREG GATTINE: ...and medals of honor and things like that.
JEFF COHEN: In media you just gain promotion. One of the hawkish hosts on MSNBC when I was there, he's the only one I know who's lost a show for getting it all wrong. Why-- because he's the General Manager of MSNBC, that's Dan Abrams.
GREG GATTINE:Ah..., oh,he doesn't...the Abrams Report isn't on MSNBC anymore?
JEFF COHEN: No, he's been kicked upstairs. He was so hawkish on the war...
GREG GATTINE: that's right...he's in charge now....
JEFF COHEN: ...but Phil Donohue, who was completely correct on what would happen, he got terminated.His prime time show was the most watched program on MSNBC, and it got terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasionand we know from memos that have leaked out, it was completely political, it was because of his stance on the war.
GREG GATTINE: You were the producer of that show?
JEFF COHEN: Senior producer.
GREG GATTINE: Senior producer of The Donohue Show, which I loved.
FRANZ KAISIK: I love Phil.
JEFF COHEN: Yeah, there were some great things happening there, but they kept muzzling us. You know, three months before the war began they gave us orders. Top management said, every time we booked a guest that was anti-war, we had to book two that were pro-war.
GREG GATTINE:(laughter)
FRANZ KAISIK: A two-to-one ratio....
GREG GATTINE:...and make sure the anti-war guy isn't that smart...
JEFF COHEN: If we booked two guests on the left, we had to have three on the right. [general laughter] In one meeting a producer suggested booking Michael Moore for a show, and she was told we'd have to have three right-wingers for ballast. [more general laughter]
GREG GATTINE: How is that a good business model when the top rated show, or one of the top-rated shows, is cancelled by the network?
JEFF COHEN: Again, it's not a business model. It was...at that point it was timidity and it was fear of offending the Bush Administratio. When the lobbyists for General Electric and all the other big media companies were going to the Federal Communications Commission with their hands out because they wanted the few remaining caps on ownership to be eliminated, so that the media titans could become even more titantic. And I think what the owners needed was conveyed to the top managers, and it's the only explanation I can come up with for why they were, as you say, for breaking all rules of how you grow a media business. You don't cancel your top show. It was purely political. It was about the war, and it was about not offending the Administration when General Electric, the owner of NBC -MSNBC -needed something from the administration.
GREG GATTINE: OK. Now the FCC is still debating the media ownership rules...of, course radio and television airwaves are owned by the people. Now you were at the big talk last week, and you're off to another one...I think the next one was down south somewhere, you said, Jeff?
JEFF COHEN: Yes, I think there's one other....the time remaining to comment to the FCC is December 21st. There is a place...it was so great in our community to see so many people who care about media diversity and de-monopolization....I mean, we live in a community where you have like, well, ClearChannel; they own 1200 radio stations across the country. They own about ten in our area beside the seven they own in Albany....you've got Cumulus owns a bunch in our area...There's very few independent broadcasters left, WDST is one that's locally owned. Studies show that if you're locally owned you care more about the community, you do more news about the community, you interview people in your community. These other stations are sort of canned, and they have programming from some other place, and I was impressed that so many hundreds of people from our community talked to the FCC. People can do that online now. If they want to directly e-mail the FCC, there's a website where you can write your own e-mail and it goes directly to the FCC. It's called Stop Big Media.
http://stopbigmedia.com/
GREG GATTINE: OK, we'll put that up on our website, too. Were you surprised that...Do you know Michael Kopps? Were you surprised that he's against this big conglomerate?
JEFF COHEN: Oh, yes. Michael Kopps is the ranking Democrat...there's three Republicans and two Democrats on the FCC. We dream of the day when there's a Democratic president who will make Michael Kopps the chairman of that commission. Kopps has been committed to a diverse media for years and years. He's one of the best FCC commissioners in decades, perhaps ever, and he's now in a minority, and he's the one who showed up to hear what people in our community had to tell him. The people that did this local...ah, that arranged this local hearing with our great congressman [Maurice] Hinchey, who's so good on de-monopolizing and diversifying media,
the group that set that up, the Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media:
http://www.re-media.org/
I think that if we could get more power to Kopps, if more people could write the FCC on their own views about the media, I think it gives him a little more power...it's how we stopped this from going through in 2003. 2003, right when the Iraq War was happening, when the Iraq War was coming. You had the media owners that thought they were going to - in secret, which is how media policy is always made: behind closed doors with the Federal Communications Commission - they thought they were going to get all the remaining caps loosened, all the rules that restricted anything, they were going to get those things blown away. They didn't count on about two or three million people e-mailing the FCC, crashing their computers, and stopping that process. We have to stop it again.
GREG GATTINE: Are FCC commissioners appointed for life?
JEFF COHEN: No, they're appointed I think for about four years, and then they're usually re-appointed. But the party that has the White House usually gets three commissioners and the minority party gets two commissioners. If there's a change in the White House in 2008, there's a good liklihood - especially if it's a decent Democrat - a good liklihood that Commissioner Kopps becomes head of the Commission. And that would really matter. I mean what we really need to do is not just stop the media from getting concentrated in even fewer hands. We need to go back to the old rules where there used to be a rule that said one individual or company in the whole country could only have seven TV licences, seven AM radio and seven FM radio. Now you have ClearChannel in our area, they own double that just in our own area. And there are just so many good things that a commission that was serving the public could do with the media. You know, the FCC was set up to protect the public from concentrated media power. What's happened since the Reagan era is that the FCC protects concentrated media power from the public.
GREG GATTINE: Yes, just the opposite....
JEFF COHEN: Right, and Commissioner Kopps is trying to go back to an FCC that really is serving the public. We have such new, great technology, if we had diverse ownership, imagine what our media could do in sponsoring debate, diverse culture, diverse music,...Greg, I think you're the last DJ...Didn't Tom Petty write that song about you?
end of part 1 of 2
