«Accuracy in Media»: История и деятельность консервативного медиа-надзора в США.

Conservative American news website

Accuracy in Media (AIM) is an American non profit conservative 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. It is apparent that he is a member of an international socialist movement." It also criticized the media's response to the COVID 19 pandemic. 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." Reed 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." 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. as of April 2020, the current president of AIM is Adam Guillette.

AIM's income in 1971 was $5,000. 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.

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", which is contrary to three independent reports including one by Kenneth Starr. AIM faulted the media for not picking up on the conspiracy, 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. Yet, his work was called a "hoax" and "discredited" by conservatives such as Ann Coulter, it was also disputed by the American Spectator, which caused Scaife to end his funding of the Arkansas Project with the publisher. 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."

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. Williams and The Nation denied wrongdoing. AIM has campaigned against the United States signing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). 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."

In 2008, AIM described Barack Obama, who was at the time a candidate in the 2008 presidential election, as "the most radical candidate ever to stand at the precipice of acquiring his party's presidential nomination. It is apparent that he is a member of an international socialist movement."

The organization gives out the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award, which has attracted controversy for some of its recipients. In 2010, AIM gave the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award to political activist Marc Morano, who is known for running the website ClimateDepot, which rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2011, AIM gave the award to Tucker Carlson. In 2013, AIM gave the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award to Jim Hoft, who runs The Gateway Pundit, a website renowned for publishing falsehoods and hoaxes.

In 2022, AIM sponsored an ad campaign against antisemitism that used a truck with a digital image of Hitler giving the Nazi salute. The image included the text: "All in favor of banning Jews, raise your right hand." Several rocks were thrown at the truck. The use of the imagery was criticized by the Anti Defamation League and the UC Berkeley chapter of Hillel International

In October 2023, following the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, AIM initiated a controversial campaign in which they displayed the names and images of college students who had expressed support for Palestine on trucks. This event sparked significant debate and controversy around issues of free speech, privacy, and online harassment. On Nov. 16, 2023, such a "doxxing truck" sponsored by AIM, with a three sided digital billboard, drove through Yale's campus displaying photos and names of at least 6 Yale students, 5 of which are graduate students of color, under a banner reading "Yale's Leading Antisemites." A website address printed on the side of the truck directed to a page with AIM's logo, which requested people petition Connecticut government officials and Yale to take action against those students. In late January 2024, AIM had a doxxing truck at CU Boulder in Colorado; one professor moved class online as a consequence.