Phil Donahue never shied away from questioning those in power, be they government officials or corporate CEOs. And no guest on his program was more frequent than Ralph Nader. Along with guests Joan Claybrook, Michael Jacobson, and Jeff Cohen, we pay tribute to a man Ralph calls “the greatest enabler and defender of the First Amendment right of free speech in American history.”
GUESTS:
Joan Claybrook is a public interest champion of the modern consumer movement and president emeritus of Public Citizen. Previously, Ms. Claybrook was head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the Carter administration, from 1977 to 1981. Before serving with NHTSA, she founded and ran Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division and worked for the Public Interest Research Group, the National Traffic Safety Bureau, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Michael Jacobson holds a PhD in microbiology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co-founded and then led the Center for Science in the Public Interest for four decades and is the founder of the National Food Museum. Dr. Jacobson is the author of Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet.
Jeff Cohen is Co-Founder and Policy Director at RootsAction. He is a media critic, columnist, documentary filmmaker, and retired journalism professor who, in 1986, founded the media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). For years, he was a regular pundit on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC discussing issues of media and politics. He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. He was senior producer of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue Show until it was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war.