War and the Media

[sarahlee]

Sunday, October 1 at 4:00 pm Eastern, 1:00 pm Pacific
Camp Democracy Panel on War and the Media on Book TV

Jeff Cohen, Ray McGovern, Robert Taicher, Jeff Norman

Jeff Cohen and Ray McGovern talk about the corporate media's coverage of the Bush administration during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. They argue that the corporate media failed in its responsibility to ask tough questions and instead decided to largely act as cheerleaders for going to war. Jeff Cohen addresses this issue through his experience producing MSNBC's Phil Donahue's Show during this period and talks about why the show was cancelled just prior to the invasion. Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years, discusses what the intelligence community was saying about Iraq prior to the war and talks about a confrontation he had with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during an event in Atlanta this past May. After their presentations, writer/director Robert Taicher makes remarks about his new documentary "Rush to War" (www.rushtowar.com). The discussion is moderated by Take On the Media founder Jeff Norman (www.takeonthemedia.org).

Author Bio: Jeff Cohen founded the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in 1986. His latest book is "Cable News Confidential" (www.jeffcohen.org).
Ray McGovern is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and is currently co-director of the Servant Leadership School in Washington, DC.

This panel was one of the events that took place at Camp Democracy, a two week long anti-war protest and teach-in held on the National Mall in Washington, DC between September 5th and September 21st.
For more information, visit www.campdemocracy.org.

www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segID=7477&schedID=452