—was the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media and endowed chair/associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College.

In 1986, he founded FAIR, the national media watch group. He oversaw FAIR’s academic studies of representation on TV and radio—and helped launch its magazine, Extra!, and its nationally-syndicated radio show, “CounterSpin.”

In 2011, he co-founded the online activism group, RootsAction.org.

In recent years, Cohen has been a co-producer of documentary movies, including "The Corporate Coup D'Etat," "The Brainwashing of My Dad," and "All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone."

Cohen is a longtime campus lecturer and columnist. In the 1990s, he co-wrote (with Norman Solomon) the nationally-syndicated Media Beat column, whose subscribers included the Arizona Republic, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Seattle Times. His columns have run online in CommonDreams, HuffPost, Alternet, Truthout and elsewhere—and in major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, Newsday, Oregonian and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1999–2000, he was a monthly columnist for Brill’s Content. He’s written investigative articles and features for Rolling Stone, The Nation, Mother Jones and other publications.

He has appeared regularly on national TV and radio. He was a daily commentator on MSNBC in 2002, a weekly panelist on the Fox News Channel's “News Watch” from 1997–2002, and a co-host of CNN's “Crossfire” in 1996. He was senior producer of MSNBC's Phil Donahue show until it was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war.

Cohen is the author or co-author of five books—

• Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media (2006)
• Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News (1997)
• The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error (1995)
• Through the Media Looking Glass: Decoding Bias and Blather in the News (1995)
• Adventures in Medialand: Behind the News, Beyond the Pundits (1993)

In the early 1980s, Cohen earned a law degree from the Peoples College of Law in Los Angeles, and worked as an ACLU lawyer. He was a board member of several civil rights groups, including the ACLU of Southern California and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference/L.A.

In 2003, he was Communications Director of the Kucinich for President campaign.

Cohen is the proud father of two smart, beautiful daughters.