Richard M. Cohen, a news producer who faced a occasional challenge, dies at 76

Richard M. Cohen, an outspoken and award-winning television news producer whose career was ultimately derailed by the devastating multiple sclerosis he wrote about in his best-selling memoir, died on December 24 in the Westchester County village of Sleepy Hollow, Modern York. He was 76 years ancient.

His wife, former “Today” show host Meredith Vieira, said his hospital death was due to acute respiratory failure.

Mr. Cohen spent more than 20 years in the news industry, working with luminaries such as Ted Koppel at ABC and Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather at CBS. But he touched on another topic, writing a memoir — and articles for HuffPost, The Modern York Times and other media outlets — about coping with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system.

Mr. Cohen was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1973, when he was 25, and was involved in making a documentary for PBS about disability policy.

Despite failing eyesight, which turned into legal blindness, and deteriorating balance, which caused falls that, to the uninformed, made him appear intoxicated, he worked as a producer for CBS News, CNN, PBS (again), and FX by the mid-1990s.

“Richard was a man of good humor and brilliant intelligence,” Mr. Koppel wrote in an email. “I’m sure his multiple illnesses caused him more than just occasional bouts of despair, but he never shared that with me.”

One of Mr. Cohen’s strategies to cope with his multiple sclerosis and live the life he wanted was denial. He told very few people about it, including the CBS News executive who hired him in 1979 for fear of being deemed unfit for work. Years later, he learned from this executive that if he had been candid about his condition, he would not have been hired.

In 2004, about a decade after his career as a producer, he published what he called his “reluctant memoir,” Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness, in which he recounted how his once energetic life was curtailed by multiple sclerosis and two attacks gigantic intestine. cancer.

“Welcome to my world,” Mr. Cohen wrote in the book, which was on The Times bestseller list for several weeks, “where I have dreams, a few illnesses and the determination to live my own life. This book is my daily conversation with myself, a chronicle of my struggles in this exotic place north of the neck.”

Ms. Vieira said in an interview that Mr. Cohen’s right side was so disabled by multiple sclerosis that he wrote “Blindsided” and subsequent books only with his nondominant left hand and with his face close to the computer screen.

“He had a lot of determination and a lot to say,” she said.

His second book, Mighty in Broken Places: Voices of Sickness, Chorus of Hope (2008), allowed him to distance himself from his own ailments. In this book, he presented the profiles of five people suffering from chronic diseases: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease; non-Hodgkin’s 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, Theresa (Beitzer) Cohen, was a nurse. His father and paternal grandmother also suffered from multiple sclerosis

As he wrote in “Blindsided,” Mr. Cohen was a “loser” in high school and was kicked off sports teams, expelled from classes and suspended. In one spectacular prank, he and some friends stole an electric chair from an abandoned prison; his father told him to return it the next day.

His focus was sharpened at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, near Des Moines, where he was an anti-war activist. He was inspired to become a television journalist after a conversation with Peter Jennings, then a correspondent for ABC News, when he visited 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 producer of the Sunday public affairs program “Problems and Answers.” In 1972, he was the manufacturer of Mr. Koppel’s flooring for the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions.

In 1973, he joined the PBS program “America ’73”, where he helped produce a documentary about disabilities. Coincidentally, it was while on PBS that he began to experience symptoms that led to a neurologist’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis

“I dropped the coffee pot for no reason.” he told Yahoo in 2019. “I fell off the curb for no reason. I noticed slight numbness in my leg.”

“It hit me pretty quickly,” he continued, “but other than that, I was very physically lively and I thought I had really nailed it. I was living in denial.”

He earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 1976, then continued working at PBS after being denied a job at “NBC Nightly News” because of his admission that he had multiple sclerosis.

In 1979, he joined CBS News as a producer. He worked for Mr. Cronkite and Mr. Rather and, despite his failing health, traveled for the “CBS Evening News” to scorching spots in Poland, Lebanon and El Salvador.

“He was an original,” Andrew Heyward, a former senior producer of the Evening News who later became president of CBS News, said in an interview. “There was a pattern at CBS where people acted according to unspoken constraints, but he wasn’t bound by those conventions. He was earnest, charming and had the qualities of an absent-minded professor that people found endearing.”

Cohen’s rebelliousness was revealed publicly in essays for The Times. In 1987 (under the name Rather, but co-written), after cuts at CBS News, an article warned that under the network’s modern owner and CEO, Laurence A. Tisch, the division was at risk of slipping into mediocrity. The article angered Tisch and Howard Stringer, president of CBS News.

Later that year, when Mr. Cohen was the Evening News’ foreign news producer, he wrote (this time under his own name) that Western news outlets should leave South Africa because of the severe restrictions placed on reporting by apartheid. country. The government asked CBS to ensure that Mr. Cohen was speaking on his own behalf and not on behalf of the network.

More importantly, he criticized Mr. Rather for the way he conducted a hostile, controversial live interview on the Evening News with Vice President George Bush on January 25, 1988, early in the presidential campaign. Mr. Rather aggressively pressed the vice president about his role in the Iran-contra scandal; The Bush campaign accused CBS of misrepresenting the terms of the interview.

“Listen, I think Dan made mistakes,” Cohen told The Des Moines Register. “I think his attitude was probably too aggressive, but that’s not the point.” He added: “We took a large hit. I think it was very harmful to us. To Dan. For our credibility.”

About six weeks later, CBS News removed Mr. Cohen as senior producer of the Evening News because of political coverage. He refused another assignment and left the network.

While at CBS, Cohen won two Emmy Awards for his reporting on the Evening News. He won third place in 1989, after returning to PBS, for his 1989 episode “The Public Mind With Bill Moyers” about the power of images in news, politics and elections. An excerpt of it was included in the four-part entry that won The Public Mind, which won a Peabody Award.

After moving to CNN, Cohen produced a documentary on Bill Clinton in 1992 during his successful presidential campaign. He retired from producing in the mid-1990s at FX.

In addition to Ms. Vieira, Mr. Cohen is survived by his daughter, Lily Cohen; their sons, Gabe and Ben; grandchild; his brother Bernard; and his sister Terrie Cohen.

Mr. Cohen didn’t want people to pity him or praise him for the way he dealt with multiple sclerosis.

“Those who struggle with stern illnesses every day and do not want to become victims are constantly told that we inspire chronically fit people.” – he wrote in HuffPost in 2014. He added: “Let me make something clear. There are no heroes, only survivors. There are no medals or merit badges hanging from our chests.