Anniversary Wishes Kudos on your 20th anniversary issue of Extra!, and thanks for all I have learned and benefited from. Best wishes for the next 20 years or until there is a free press doing its job in the USA. (If there was one thing missing in the issue, it might have been mention of Fred J. Cook, one of my favorite muckrakers.) Bob Goldberg Jericho, N.Y. . Thank you for the wonderful review of those 20 very important stories and how the media handled them. We need to have such reminders. Leonore Johnson Toledo, OH . I wish you [...]
Search Results for: Steve Rendall and Jeff Cohen
Feb
01
2006
The Language of Extra!
Reflections on fairness and accuracy
A major focus of my research is the way language can be used to oppress or empower, and I have applied this perspective to media discourse in my writing for Extra! magazine. This has given me an opportunity to reflect on what it means—for media critics as well as for those we scrutinize—to be precise, independent, reasonable and evenhanded. By examining the work of fellow writers for Extra! over the past 20 years and in learning from my own assignments, I have altered both my own approach to criticism and my definitions of key terms. My first project for Extra! [...]
Feb
01
2006
The Secret Origins of FAIR
How police spies and media moles helped launch a movement
In 1997, the Soviet Union detonated thermonuclear weapons in the sky over the United States, shutting down the Pentagon’s computer systems and leaving the nation vulnerable to invasion and occupation. The U.N., dominated by East Bloc Communists, became the U.S.’s de facto government, forcing schoolchildren to pledge allegiance to the U.N. flag. The year 1997 never fit this profile in reality, but it did in Amerika, the 12-episode miniseries broadcast by ABC in 1987. To this day, Jeff Cohen won’t reveal the identity of the person who sent him an advance script of Amerika. But that anonymous person made Cohen [...]
Jun
07
2000
Limbaugh: A Color Man Who Has a Problem With Color?
Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh may be returning to television. He recently auditioned for a job as color commentator on ABC's Monday Night Football. The tryout followed weeks of self-promotion by the self-styled "truth detector" to the millions who listen daily to his syndicated radio show on some 600 stations. Limbaugh's audition is stirring controversy. Sports columnist Thomas Boswell quipped that if Limbaugh joins Monday Night Football, then baseball's game of the week broadcasters might "team up with John Rocker." Veteran sports writer Michael Wilbon, who is black, indicated a boycott might result: "If Rush Limbaugh is put in that [...]
Oct
01
1989
Censored News: Oliver North & Co. Banned From Costa Rica
Few individuals fascinate the U.S. media like Ollie North. Few subjects grab more media attention than drugs. Few democracies win more media praise than Costa Rica. Put these three into a single scandal and it spells Front Page News, right? Wrong. What it spells is C-E-N-S-O-R-S-H-I-P. In July, North and other major Contragate figures were barred from Costa Rica. The order was issued by none other than Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. President Arias was acting on recommendations from a Costa Rican congressional commission investigating drug trafficking. The commission concluded that the Contra resupply network in Costa Rica which North [...]
