Jeff Cohen Visits

After our visit from guest speaker Jeff Cohen I am finding myself very confused about my thoughts on his lecture and the world of independent media. I thought Jeff was a very interesting speaker with a lot of experience working with mainstream media. His focus on independent media really fascinates me along with his dedication to its importance in our future. With more and more people becoming reporters and starting their own media trends I think that independent media could not be more vast and expansive than it is now. I was however really troubled with what Jeff had to say about objectivity. His viewpoint about the fact that independent media are not object but rather highly subjective and politically driven to the point of bias as being okay really bothered me. I keep trying to think about objectivity and reporting to an audience that needs the facts and not my personal opinion. To hear Jeff applaud independent media producers for using this bias way of reporting really bothered me. As someone who is so intelligent and steeped in media and its effects on a nation I was hoping to hear more from him about the need for objectivity. He was so bothered by the way in which many media markets handled left wing ideas right before the War in Iraq began that I was really disappointed he wasn't more for objectivity. All in all he had a lot of really good things to say and I think he is definitely an instrumental player in the switch towards independent media.