Accuracy in Media (AIM) is an American non-profit conservative "Follow-Up: Interview With Accuracy in Media Editor Cliff Kincaid", The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel, February 8, 2005. (Transcript available via LexisNexis) Stephen Miller, "Reed Irvine, 82, Founded Accuracy in Media", New York Sun, November 18, 2004. Douglas Martin, "Murray Baron, 94, Labor Lawyer And Head of Accuracy in Media", The New York Times, September 26, 2002. "Defining Bias Downward", Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2005. Steve Rendall. The Fairness Doctrine Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting January/February 2005 news media watchdog founded in 1969 by economist Reed Irvine. AIM supported the Vietnam War and blamed media bias for the U.S. loss in the war. During the Reagan administration, AIM criticized reporting about the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. During the Clinton administration, AIM pushed Vince Foster conspiracy theories. During the George W. Bush administration, AIM accused the media of bias against the Iraq War, defended the Bush administration's use of torture, and campaigned to stop the United States from signing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It described 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama as "the most radical candidate ever to stand at the precipice of acquiring his party's presidential nomination" and said it was "apparent that he is a member of an international socialist movement". It also criticized the media's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
AIM, which opposes the scientific consensus on climate change, has criticized media reporting on climate change. The organization gives out the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award. Past recipients include Marc Morano (who runs the climate change denial website ClimateDepot), Tucker Carlson, and Jim Hoft (founder of The Gateway Pundit).
History Accuracy in Media (AIM) was founded in 1969 by Reed Irvine, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank. In order to reduce what they perceive as bias in media reporting, AIM works to "investigate complaints, take proven cases to top media officials, seek corrections and mobilize public pressure to bring about remedial action."
Irvine and then-executive secretary Abraham Kalish sent letters to the editors of many newspapers and magazines they identified as skewed, calling out slanted news stories. If the newspaper rejected the letter, AIM bought space and printed the letter in that newspaper. Beginning in 1975, Accuracy in Media began purchasing participating interests in major media companies, allowing Irvine to attend annual shareholder meetings. He used these opportunities to express the AIM's concerns to the various companies' owners. Reed's son, Don, chairs the organization. Don Irvine referred to his father as a "die-hard anti-communist."Obituary of Reed Irvine, 82, The Washington Post, November 18, 2004. In 1990, Irvine was mentioned by Walter Goodman of The New York Times for "his efforts to put pressure on networks and advertisers to crack down on reporters to whom he takes exception do not mark him as an enthusiast of unfettered expression."
Following Irvine's death in 2004, an editorial in the Columbia Journalism Review said that "[Irvine] was stone blind to his own prejudices, and he could be scurrilous and unfair in his attacks, but he knew something about our major media" and credited Irvine in part for the rise of the popular conservative view that the American media is imbued with a liberal bias. According to The Washington Post, while Irvine worked at the Federal Reserve, co-workers he would eat lunch with often "complained that conservative points of view were not adequately reported in the media." In his way of changing this, Irvine formed AIM. It is also said that Reed Irvine was urged to start the organization after the 1968 Democratic National Convention because he thought the mainstream media networks were overly sympathetic to antiwar protestors.
Membership to AIM grew significantly when Reagan was president, topping 40,000 members with a budget of $1.5 million. As the organization grew, Reed Irvine was also a shareholder in media companies. During a shareholder meeting for TBS in 1989, Irvine said at the meeting that conservative leaning organizations had a difficult time getting their views presented on TBS and this was not the case for more liberal leaning groups. the current president of AIM is Adam Guillette.
Funding AIM's income in 1971 was $5,000. By the early 1980s, it was $1.5 million. In 2009, AIM received $500,000 in contributions. At least eight separate oil companies are known to have been contributors in the early 80s. Only three donors are given by name: the Allied Educational Foundation (founded and chaired by George Barasch), Shelby Cullom Davis, and billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife gave $2.2 million to Accuracy in Media between 1977 and 1998. AIM has been funded by Exxon.
Activism
War coverage AIM was critical of media reports about the harmful effects of Agent Orange, a military herbicide with adverse health effects for humans, in the Vietnam War. AIM blamed the U.S. media for the loss in the Vietnam War. AIM criticized the 1983 PBS documentary series Vietnam: A Television History as being pro-communist. According to The New York Times, one of AIM's greatest accomplishments was the documentary, Television's Vietnam: The Real Story in response to the PBS series.
AIM charged the alliance conducting the NATO Kosovo intervention in 1999 with distorting the situation in Kosovo and lying about the number of civilian deaths in order to justify U.S. involvement in the conflict under the Clinton administration. AIM supported the Iraq War and accused the media of bias against the Iraq War in 2007, and alleged bias in mainstream media's coverage of the 2012 Benghazi attack. In 2008, AIM asserted "Waterboarding Is Not Torture" in a sub-heading. The article said that Guantanamo Bay detainees "are enjoying hotel living conditions" and that torture is what "left-wingers associate with anything that makes an accused terrorist uncomfortable".
Human rights In 1982, The New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner broke the story of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. The report was strongly criticized by AIM and the Reagan administration, and Bonner was pressured into business reporting, later deciding to resign. AIM was critical of journalist Helen Marmor, who in 1983 produced a documentary for NBC concerning the Russian Orthodox Church. AIM contended that "it ignored the repressive religious policies of the Soviet state."
Vince Foster conspiracy theory AIM received a substantial amount of funding from Richard Mellon Scaife who paid Christopher W. Ruddy to investigate allegations that President Bill Clinton was connected to the suicide of Vince Foster. AIM contended that "Foster was murdered",AIM Report: Evidence Proving Foster Was Murdered July 1, 2001 which is contrary to three independent reports including one by Kenneth Starr.Full text of the report on the 1993 death of White House counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., compiled by Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr. After an exhaustive three-year investigation, Starr reaffirmed that Foster's death was a suicide AIM faulted the media for not picking up on the conspiracy,Vincent Foster Murder Evidence Accuracy in Media. and applied itself for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosure of Foster's death-scene photographs. Its suit to compel disclosure was denied by the District Court of Columbia in a summary judgment, unanimously affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
AIM credited much of its reporting on the Foster case to Ruddy.See: Notes Section for "Chris Ruddy" The Case Against James T. Riady , Accuracy in Media 2001. Yet, his work was called a "hoax" and "discredited" by conservatives such as Ann Coulter,"Even if Christopher Ruddy's The Strange Death of Vincent Foster was considered a conservative hoax book, it was also conservatives who discredited it." Chapter Six Endnote 105, pp. 224–225, Slander, Ann Coulter. it was also disputed by the American Spectator, which caused Scaife to end his funding of the Arkansas Project with the publisher.Anti-Clinton Billionaire Goes Before Grand Jury Washington Post, September 29, 1998, As CNN explained on February 28, 1997, "The [Starr] report refutes claims by conservative political organizations that Foster was the victim of a murder plot and coverup", but "despite those findings, right-wing political groups have continued to allege that there was more to the death and that the president and First Lady tried to cover it up."Report: Starr Rules Out Foul Play In Foster Death CNN February 23, 1997
United Nations AIM has been critical of the United Nations and its coverage by the media. In February 2005, AIM alleged that United Nations correspondents, including Ian Williams, a correspondent for The Nation had accepted money from the UN while covering it for their publications. AIM also asserted that the United Nations Correspondents Association may have violated immigration laws by employing the Williams' wife.Accuracy in Media press release, "U.N. Reporters Group May Have Violated U.S. Immigration Law" , February 22, 2005Cliff Kincaid, "Journalists Exposed on the U.N. Payroll; George Soros, Ted Turner Pay for Journalism Prizes" Accuracy in Media, February 15, 2005 Williams and The Nation denied wrongdoing.The Nation, "In fact ...", February 24, 2005Ian Williams, "Confessions of a Payola Pundit" , Mediachannel.org, February 23, 2005 AIM has also campaigned against the United States signing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). AIM writes, "UNCLOS is a foot in the door for a wide-ranging international agenda... America's survival as a sovereign nation hangs in the balance." AIM argued that signing up to UNCLOS could lead to the prohibition of spanking children.
Climate change AIM rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2008, AIM wrote, "the theory of man-made global warming is designed to increase government control over our economy and our lives through higher taxes and energy rationing." In November 2005, AIM columnist Cliff Kincaid criticized Fox News for broadcasting a program The Heat is On, which reported that global warming represents a serious problem (the program was broadcast with a disclaimer). Kincaid argued the piece was one-sided and stated that this "scandal" amounted to a "hostile takeover of Fox News."Cliff Kincaid, "Hostile Takeover of Fox News" , November 21, 2005 In 2006, Kincaid criticized Fox for "tilting to the left" on the issue of climate change.
AIM criticized the media for not covering a 1995 study on climate change, which it argued cast doubt on climate change. One of the authors of the study responded to AIM, "The paper... focused on a discrepancy between observations and theoretical climate model predictions—the sort of thing that climate change deniers love to take out of context and hype. The conservative organization Accuracy in Media took note of the study, citing lack of media coverage of it as some sort of evidence of media bias in coverage of climate change—something that I, to this day, find puzzling as the paper actually dealt with a relatively obscure technical detail of climate models and hardly challenged the mainstream view that human activity was leading to the warming of the globe."
Barack Obama