Right-wing U.S. media critic leaves this mortal coil
The NYT reports that Reed Irvine, founder of Accuracy in Media (AIM) as gone to his great reward at age 82 after a life of exposing liberal media perfidy. Or something like that.
Here's the NYT's take:
eed Irvine, the founder of Accuracy in Media, a watchdog group dedicated to exposing, challenging and at times bullying those he accused of slanting news coverage from a liberal perspective, died on Tuesday at a hospice in Rockville, Md. He was 82. A longtime resident of Silver Spring, Md., Mr. Irvine had recently moved to Gaithersburg, Md.
The cause was complications of a stroke, said his son, Donald, AIM's current chairman.
Founded in 1969, Accuracy in Media is a group that, as Mr. Irvine described it, was intended to be “representative of the consumers of the journalistic product and not the producers.” Outlining its mission, he said that AIM would “investigate complaints, take proven cases to top media officials, seek corrections and mobilize public pressure to bring about remedial action.”
Ideologically, it paved the way for the tide of conservative talk shows, Web sites and news programming that would follow decades later. And while AIM occasionally lived up to its name, it also spent much of its time pursuing conspiracy theories.