Reed Cowan

Darrin Reed Cowan (also known as Reed Abplanalp-Cowan) (born July 24, 1972) is an American journalist.

Cowan was born on July 24, 1972, in Roosevelt, Utah, and was raised in the Mormon religion.

During his teenage years Cowan had a relationship with Gregory Abplanalp, who attended the same high school as Cowan.

Cowan ended the relationship at the request of a church leader and went through years of various forms of conversion therapy, then married a woman at the urging of another church leader.

In 1995, Cowan worked as a part-time on-air reporter for Fox's KSTU in Salt Lake City, Utah while a student at Utah State University.

From there he assumed full-time positions as an anchor for KBAK-TV in Bakersfield, California, and as an anchor for WWTV in Cadillac, Michigan.

Cowan next worked as a reporter and weekend morning anchor for KSL-TV in Salt Lake City.

After KSL-TV, Cowan moved to KTVX, also in Salt Lake City.

While there, he anchored Good Morning Utah and covered the terrorist attacks of 9-11, the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, the murder of Lori Hacking, the death of former President Ronald Reagan and the fugitive stories of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs.

During this marriage Cowan had his first child, Wesley, who died in 2006 after falling from a horizontal set of monkey bars.

On April 3, 2006, Cowan, then working as a television news reporter, Cowan was called to cover a story about a child who had been accidentally hanged from a set of monkey bars.

Upon arrival he learned that the child was his own 4-year old son Wesley.

The first half of the film expresses Cowan's anger towards the local news media, both for indifference towards his situation and for what he alleged to be inaccurate reporting.

One report claimed that Wesley had hung himself on a swingset, suggesting a deliberate suicide, which Cowan denied.

The film becomes a "therapeutic journal" in which Cowan processes his grief while critically examining his own role in sensationalizing the news in search of ratings and the furtherance of his professional ambitions.

The second half of the film follows Cowan seeking to fill the void left in Wesley's wake by raising money to build a schoolhouse for an impoverished rural community in Kenya.

Cowan also made the 2007 documentary The Other Side of the Lens, which covers his emotions over his son's death and his experiences with the media attention Wesley's death attracted.

Cowan is also on the advisory board for Free The Children, a child advocacy organization, and serves as a producer for the youth organization Power In You.

He is also an active supporter of anti-bullying legislation and has worked as a public speaker on the subject of bullying in school.

Cowan has produced and directed two self-made films, The Other Side of the Lens and ''8.

The Mormon Proposition''.

These were met with mixed reviews from film critics, with some praising his highly personal choices of subject matter while others criticized what they viewed as self-absorption, disjointed storytelling and substandard production as well as the overuse of stock footage.

Cowan's first film, The Other Side of the Lens, explored Cowan's feelings as he mourned the death of his 4 year-old son Wesley in a playground accident.

The film follows Cowan to an impoverished rural region of Kenya, where he sought to expiate his grief by raising money to build a schoolhouse.

It depicts Cowan as a humanitarian whose trauma caused him to evolve as a person, highlighting his efforts to save children from violence which followed Kenya's December 2007 election.

Along with Jordan Whitney, Cowan won a local Rocky Mountain Emmy Award in 2008 for editing a piece called Emo Culture.

Cowan was nominated alongside coworkers Robbin Simmons, Dianna Reed and Chris Volz for the 2008 and 2009 Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards but they failed to win any prizes.

Film critic Richard Propes and founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association, who was on the jury for the 2009 Indianapolis International Film Festival where the film screened, rated the film C− and gave it 1.5 out of 5 stars, calling it "a self-indulgent, pretentious film that only begins to become effective toward the end of the 102-minute film."

While much of the film was devoted to criticizing sensationalism in the news media, Propes writes, ""The Other Side of the Lens" reinforces the sensationalism by showing examples of said sensationalism," using as an example footage of a driver intentionally crashing into a crowd with children, at one point in slow-motion.

which is repeated throughout the film.

The film's final pivot to saving children from election violence he calls "a loosely connected dramatic story arch with no true purpose beyond, perhaps, illustrating Cowan's evolution of a man" which "feels like yet another manipulation in a film that has too often felt unsatisfyingly and unnecessarily sensationalized.".

Propes concludes,"Unfortunately, despite Cowan's seemingly sincere efforts, the news reporter never moves out of the way enough for the true story of "The Other Side of the Lens" to come to life."

In a review for the 2009 Nashville Film Festival, Nashville Scene film editor Jim Ridley concludes, "The director's noble intentions and good deeds cannot be faulted, but his insistence on telling the entire story first-person, often on camera, sometimes edges queasily close to narcissism—especially when he leads a guided tour of a compound filled with children's corpses."

Ridley also highlights Cowan's use of stock footage of Saddam Hussein's execution by hanging.

Joe Shearer on FilmYap rated the film more positively, giving it 3.5 stars out of 5.

Cowan co-directed the GLAAD Media Award winning 2010 documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition with Steven Greenstreet.

Cowan started his journalism career working as a radio disc-jockey for KNEU Radio in Roosevelt, Utah.

The marriage ended after three years and Cowan re-united with Abplanalp, whom he married on September 4, 2013, in Laguna Beach and with whom adopted three children.

The couple sustained dozens of Utah’s gay couples receiving marriage licenses at the Washington County Clerk’s office on December 23, 2013.

Wesley's death prompted Cowan to found the Wesley Smiles Coalition, which works with Free the Children to raise funds to build schools in Africa.