Richard M. Cohen, the outspoken, award-winning television news producer whose career was ultimately derailed by the devastation of multiple sclerosis, which he wrote about in his best-selling memoir, 12 He died on April 24th in the village of Sleepy Hollow, New York. Located in Westchester County. He was 76 years old.
His wife, former “Today” show host Meredith Vieira, said the cause of death at the hospital was acute respiratory failure.
Cohen spent more than 20 years in the news industry, working with such luminaries as ABC's Ted Koppel and CBS's Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. But he took on a different theme when he wrote a memoir about dealing with MS, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system, and contributed articles to the Huffington Post and the New York Times, among others.
Cohen was diagnosed with MS in 1973 at age 25 and was helping produce a PBS documentary about the politics of disability.
Despite losing his eyesight and becoming legally blind, losing his balance and causing falls, and appearing inebriated to those in the know, he continued to work on CBS News, CNN, and PBS until the mid-1990s. (again), worked as a producer for FX.
“Richard was a man of vibrant humor and brilliant intellect,” Koppel wrote in an email. “I'm sure his many illnesses were troubling him more than occasional bouts of despair, but he didn't tell me that.”
One of Mr. Cohen's strategies for dealing with MS and living the life he chose was denial. He told very few people, including the CBS News executive who hired him in 1979, for fear of being deemed unfit. Years later, he learned from the executive that if he had been honest about his condition, he would not have been hired.
In 2004, about 10 years after his career as a producer ended, he published what he called an “unintentional memoir,” The Blind Side: Living Life Beyond Illness, which he once described as He detailed how his active life was limited by MS and two colon attacks. cancer.
“Welcome to my world,” Cohen wrote in the book, which spent several weeks on the Times bestseller list. This book is a daily conversation between me and myself, and a record of my struggles in an exotic location just north of the Neck. ”
Mr. Vieira said in an interview that Mr. Cohen had lost so much movement on his right side due to MS that he typed out “The Blind Side'' and later books using only his non-dominant left hand, with his face close to the computer screen.
“He was very determined and had a lot to say,” she said.
His second book, Strong at the Broken Places: Voices of Illness, a Chorus of Hope (2008), gave him a chance to distance himself from his illness. In that book, he profiled five people with chronic illnesses. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Crohn's disease; muscular dystrophy; and bipolar disorder.
Richard Merrill Cohen was born on February 14, 1948 in Manhattan. His father, Benjamin, was a doctor. His mother, Teresa (Weitzer) Cohen, was a nurse. His father and paternal grandmother also had MS.
Cohen wrote in “The Blind Side” that he was a “bad guy” in high school, and was kicked out of the athletic club, kicked out of classes, and suspended from school. In one epic prank, he and some friends steal the electric chair from an abandoned prison. His father had it returned the next day.
His focus was honed at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, near Des Moines, where he became an active antiwar activist. He was inspired to become a broadcast journalist after speaking with Peter Jennings, then a correspondent for ABC News, during a visit to campus.
After graduating in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in history and political science, Mr. Cohen was hired by ABC News as an assistant to the producer of the Sunday public affairs program “Issues and Answers.” In 1972, he served as floor producer for Mr. Koppel at the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions.
In 1973, he joined the PBS show “America '73” and participated in the production of a documentary about disability. Coincidentally, it was during his time at PBS that he began experiencing symptoms that led to a neurologist's diagnosis of MS.
“I dropped the coffee pot for no reason,” he told Yahoo in 2019. I noticed a little numbness in my legs. ”
“My vision returned fairly quickly,” he continued. I lived in denial. ”
He earned a master's degree from Columbia University School of Journalism in 1976 and continued to work for PBS after being turned down for a job on “NBC Nightly News” because of his admitted MS.
In 1979, he joined CBS News as a producer. He worked for Mr. Cronkite and Mr. Rather, and even as his condition worsened, he traveled to hot spots in Poland, Lebanon and El Salvador for “CBS Evening News.”
“He was an original,” Andrew Hayward, a former senior Evening News producer who later became president of CBS News, said in an interview. “At CBS, there was a kind of mold in which people acted within implicit constraints, and he was not bound by those conventions. He was a straightforward, charming, well-loved, absent-minded professor. It had a similar character.”
Mr. Cohen's rebelliousness came to the fore in an opinion essay for the Times. In 1987 (under Mr. Rather's byline, but included), an article after layoffs at CBS News highlighted the department's potential for mediocrity under the station's new owner and chief executive, Lawrence A. Tisch. I was warned that there would be. The article infuriated Mr. Tisch and CBS News President Howard Stringer.
Later that year, when Mr. Cohen was the foreign news producer for the Evening News, he argued (this time under his own name) that Western news organizations should leave South Africa because of severe restrictions on reporting under apartheid. ) wrote. state. The government sought assurances from CBS that Mr. Cohen was speaking for himself and not the network.
More importantly, he criticized Mr. Rather for his handling of a hostile and controversial live interview with Vice President George Bush on the Evening News on January 25, 1988, early in the presidential campaign. That's true. Instead, he aggressively pressed the vice president about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. The Bush campaign accused CBS of misrepresenting the terms of the interview.
“Look, I think Dan made a mistake,” Cohen told the Des Moines Register. “I think his attitude was probably too aggressive, but that's not the point,” he added. “We were hit hard. I think it was very damaging to us. To Mr. Dan. For our trust.”
About six weeks later, CBS News fired Mr. Cohen as senior producer of political reporting for the Evening News. He refused another assignment and left the network.
During his time at CBS, Mr. Cohen won two Emmy Awards for his reporting on the “Evening News.” After returning to PBS, he won third place in 1989 for “Bill Moyers' Public Mind” segment on the power of images in news, politics, and elections. His segment was included in a four-part Peabody Award-winning entry for “The Public Mind.”
After moving to CNN, Cohen made a documentary about Bill Clinton, who was running for president in 1992. He ended his career as a producer at FX in the mid-1990s.
In addition to Mr. Vieira, Mr. Cohen is survived by his daughter, Lily Cohen; their sons, Gabe and Ben; Grandchild. his brother, Bernard; and his sister Terry Cohen.
Cohen didn't want people to pity him or praise him for how he dealt with multiple sclerosis.
“Those who fight serious illness every day and refuse to be victims continue to be told that we are the inspiration for the chronically healthy,” he told HuffPost in 2014. I wrote it on the plate. “Let me set the record straight. There are no heroes, only survivors. There are no medals or merit badges hanging from our chests.”
