Muhammad Cohen

Category: CNN

  • CNN insider pitches softball questions, answers

    When I learned my former CNN colleague and teammate Jim Barnett had written Playing Games at CNN about the pioneering news network’s Washington bureau softball team, I looked forward to indulging in that DC ritual of looking for my name in the index. Alas, the book spans the years 1998-2007, beginning three years after I left Washington for Hong Kong.

    The book recounts how the CNN CaNiNes brought disparate elements of CNN together and gave us something to share beyond the too often tragic stories we often covered – and the tragic ways we often covered them.

    I remember a moment in the newsroom circa 1992 when a news anchor lamented how interest in the network was bound to diminish with the end of the Cold War. “There’s no more Big Story for us,” the anchor sighed. I theatrically unfurled a twenty dollar bill from my wallet. “Financial news is boring,” the anchor clucked dismissively, en route to becoming a major player at CNN and, to this day, in the broader media universe. I was just a writer/third baseman, watching as CNBC came along and ate CNN’s lunch ratings-wise. In 1995, I joined CNBC Asia.

    The late 1990s and early 2000s were far more tumultuous times with the internet challenging established media across the board. As Barnett tells it, with the light touch, dogged conviction and impeccable control of a fine newsman, pitcher and team manager, the CaNiNes and their Metropolitan Media Softball League rivals reflected that turmoil and their struggles to cope with those seismic shifts that continue to this day, as well as providing players and fans a brief respite from them.

    Washington ritualists take note: Playing Games at CNN has no index.

    Former US diplomat and broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is Asia editor at large for iGaming Business, a longtime contributor to Forbes, columnist for Asia Times and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about TV news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his biography, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook, ex-Twitter @MuhammadCohen and LinkedIn.

  • Larry King signs off

    When I attended grad school at Stanford, Larry King became a big part of my life. Then we became colleagues, sort of.

    During the baseball season, one of Bay Areas teams was usually at home and the other was usually playing in a different time zone. With luck, from 4.30 in the afternoon to 11pm there’d be baseball on the radio. Then there’d be Larry King’s overnight show on the Mutual Broadcasting System for as long as I stayed up.

    King was my nighttime companion, as he was for millions. My second year of grad school, my pal Ken joined the party – he was already a King fan; I never dared ask why – and the show was part of the soundtrack that began our four decades of friendship. King wasn’t brilliant, but for his interview subjects and his listeners, he was a comfortable fit.

    As a kid in Brooklyn, King grew up with baseball legend Sand Koufax. King told a riotous story about driving with Koufax and couple of other friends as high schoolers on a cold night to find a cheap ice cream at a New Haven outlet of the Carvel chain. The story was on tape and King would replay it every couple of months. A years later, as a baseball writer I was at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida, and ran into Koufax, then a spring training instructor for the Dodgers. I asked him if King’s Carvel story was true. Koufax shrugged and replied, “What do you think?’ with just the hint of a smile.

    When I worked as a news writer and producer in CNN’s Washington bureau a few years later, in the hour ahead of shooting Larry King Live, King and his suspenders would regularly drift into the newsroom and try to act like one of guys. For King it seemed easier talking to movie stars and word leaders than to us working stiffs, even though he was doing double shifts those days, the TV show followed by the radio overnights. Even though I saw him dozens of times, I never asked King about the Carvel story.

    Former US diplomat and broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a contributor to Forbes and Inside Asian Gaming, columnist/correspondent for Asia Times, and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

  • Fareeding between the lines in Zakaria flap

    CNN host and Time columnist Fareed Zakaria’s admitted plagiarism is sadly unsurprising. Zakaria’s apology and wrist slaps notwithstanding, the incident is unlikely to spur the formerly interesting celebrity journalist to change his ways.

    Initially, I was a big fan of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, but this incident is not the first time the host has disappointed nor even the second time Zakaria fell short in his work on the show.

    Underlying those failures are some key facts about Zakaria and the league where he plays that make further disappointments likely. The cult of the celebrity journalist/public intellectual makes shortcuts inevitable and militates against serious work. Hence, writing about guns in the US – that week’s hot topic and thus required for the hot columnist – even though it ranged far from Zakaria’s foreign affairs expertise.

    The shoddy Newsweek cover story Hit the Road, Barrack by Zakaria cohort and frequent guest Niall Ferguson making waves this week illustrates the level of pap players at this level deliver that serve as advertising for their speaking gigs that pay huge multiples of what they make for writing. Editors are complicit in this game, suspending standards to suit celebrities and cut jobs for the likes of fact checkers.

    Zakaria’s other sin is that he’s become a shill for the establishment. His CNN show is a safe haven for Robert Rubin and his ilk, the way Fox News is for John Bolton. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the GPS wet kiss for Singapore that was my first disappointment came while Yale University, where Zakaria earned his BA and served until this week on its governing board, while the school was laying groundwork for its Singapore branch campus, offering liberal arts in an illiberal place.

    Zakaria is an inspired choice to promote, defend and extend the establishment. He’s earned his bones in the group, but given his outsider origins, he at once broadens the tent and is a reliable bet to slavishly toe the line. Zakaria has been lightly tapped for his plagiarism; he wouldn’t have gotten off so lightly if he’d asked Rubin during their interview, “Why was it okay for you to leave the government for a $15 million a year job at a bank that directly benefited from decisions you made as Treasury Secretary and policies you advocated in that position?”

    Zakaria’s CNN show is also a platform for establishment celebrity journalists/public intellectuals to promote themselves and reinforce their perceived importance. Without such vehicles for mutual back scratching, people like Ferguson or Thomas Friedman might be forced to continue the more rigorous work that earned them their places at the table instead of drafting on each others’ Sunday morning hot air.

    Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.