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Jeff Cohen’s Shortlist

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Posted on June 11 2008 in by austra

Jeff Cohen’s Shortlist

Published on June 11, 2008

Who is Jeff Cohen?

Jeff Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986. He is the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. His latest book, Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, explores his years as a commentator or producer at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. A recovering pundit, his TV career was cut short in 2003 when he was terminated for political reasons weeks before the Iraq invasion. Cohen’s columns on media and politics have been widely published in print and online, including in USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Atlanta Journal, Miami Herald, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, The Nation, Alternet, TomPaine and CommonDreams. His most difficult job ever was communications director of the Kucinich for President campaign in 2003.

Jeff Cohen on the Power of Film

As a lifelong activist/advocate, I’ve been inspired and educated by documentary films since I got hooked on newsreel.orgNewsreels in the late 1960s. Books and articles often can’t match the emotional power of a well-made movie on a social or political topic. And I sometimes absorb information more readily from moving image than text. Classic documentaries have come to mark historical eras and issues, like Hearts and Minds (Vietnam) or Harlan County USA (labor) or Koyaanisqatsi (environment/consumerism) or The Sorrow and the Pity (Nazi collaboration/resistance). It’s hard to think about the civil rights Movement without thinking of Eyes on the Prize. A non-documentary film set in historical reality, like Oliver Stone’s Salvador, can also teach powerfully.

Immersed in docs and independent films (bless channels like Free Speech TV, Link, Sundance and IFC), it’s difficult to single out particular movies. I’ve loved films that take us, through depth or poetry or whimsy, into slices of our culture - like Hoop Dreams, Tongues Untied or Super Size Me (a doc even my kids liked). My bias is toward documentaries like those by Bill Moyers and Danny Schechter that examine media shortcomings. Since I can’t list the hundreds that have moved or educated me, below are eight favorites, in no particular order. (Full disclosure: I know most of the filmmakers; I’m a talking head in a few of these.)

Jeff Cohen’s Film Picks

The Panama Deception

Barbara Trent directed one of the most powerful movies of media criticism ever, showing hour by hour what American TV news was telling us about the US invasion of Panama, and what was really happening on the ground as civilians burned to death in their tenements. Few who’ve seen it will ever trust TV news again.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Hollywood couldn’t have scripted this any more dramatically, as Irish filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain take us inside Venezuela’s presidential palace and onto the streets of Caracas in the middle of the aborted 2002 military coup. One need not worship Hugo Chavez to be appalled that the Bush administration (and The New York Times) defended the coup.

Tell the Truth and Run

Rick Goldsmith directed this endearing profile of George Seldes, the pioneering independent journalist (first to crusade on the tobacco link to cancer beginning in 1941.) His In Fact newsletter of media criticism reached a circulation of 176,000 in 1947 before FBI harassment and anti-communist hysteria doomed the publication. Seldes lights up the screen in interviews conducted at the youthful age of 98; he died in 1995 at age 104. (Seldes helped clear a path for I.F. Stone and his independent weekly, also the subject of a documentary.)

The Times of Harvey Milk

An unforgettable movie about an unforgettable activist and elected official who was murdered (along with the mayor) inside San Francisco City Hall. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official of any major American city. Rob Epstein’s film vividly depicts the community and movement that arose to elect Milk as City Supervisor, the killing and its aftermath.

Bowling for Columbine

I’ve liked Michael Moore’s work from Roger & Me through Sicko, but there’s something special about Bowling for Columbine - taking on everything from gun culture to “welfare reform” to militarism to TV’s selling of fear. And I don’t need factually-challenged corporate media outlets to “fact-check” Michael’s comedic advocacy films. Unlike the mainstream, his don’t rely on unnamed, unreliable sources selling the next war.

War Made Easy

Speaking of selling war, this 2007 documentary uses stunning archival footage to reveal a pattern of lies and media complicity that have propelled every US war and intervention since Vietnam. (Disclosure: The movie - produced by Loretta Alper and the Media Education Foundation - centers on author Norman Solomon, my friend and colleague.)

Outfoxed

Robert Greenwald’s attack on media conglomeration and Fox News - informed heavily by inside sources and memos - was a smash success in online netroots marketing. Viewed alone or with a friend, this movie can be depressing. Viewed in a packed theater, it rivals Michael Moore and Richard Pryor for belly laughs.

Body of War
This new documentary offers two compelling narratives - an inspiring Iraq war vet, Tomas Young, bravely coping after taking a bullet in the spine, juxtaposed with a cowardly gang of US senators who authorized the Iraq invasion out of fear or political opportunism. Tomas drives the narrative alongside an older, unlikely hero: antiwar senator Robert Byrd. Produced by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue. (More full disclosure: Phil and I were MSNBC colleagues until we were terminated before the invasion for the crime of practicing journalism.)

This article is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. It was originally published on MediaRights.org, a project of Arts Engine, Inc. This notice must accompany the article at all times.

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