Accuracy in Media

A biased and corrupt news media have enabled the Obama administration to present itself as modestly successful, relatively scandal free, and advancing American interests and values at home and abroad. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Accuracy in Media (AIM) has been documenting for the past six years. Most of what is generally considered to be the mainstream media have been spinning agenda-driven falsehoods and obscuring the facts. However, some in the media continue their efforts to combat this liberal bias and inform the public about issues the mainstream media deliberately omit, spin, or suppress. As part of its 2015 Reed Irvine Award ceremony, held on April 21st, AIM championed the efforts of a few of these voices for truth and accountability, and awarded them for their ongoing efforts.

roger-aronoff-judge-jeanine-pirro-don-irvine“It’s about truth and justice, right and wrong. It’s about evidence,” said Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro describing how she runs her show, “Justice with Judge Jeanine.”

“And the most disappointing part of all this, folks, is the fact that nobody really cares about the truth anymore,” she observed. She later continued, “And when the mainstream media is more concerned about an ideology, about politics, than truth and right and wrong, I’m telling you folks we are in real trouble.”

Judge Pirro came from an average family in Elmira, NY. She has served as both a judge and District Attorney, and hosted her own Emmy winning court show before finding a home at Fox News. She received AIM’s prestigious Reed Irvine Award for Investigative Journalism.

“This award means a great deal to me,” she said. “What was amazing was when he [Reed Irvine] started coming on the scene, people were saying well, ‘We really do have enough conservative people on television,’ as if enough of you over there, we don’t need any more of you.”

Chris Plante, host of WMAL’s “The Chris Plante Show,” spent 17 years at CNN and said that while he did good honest work there, in the end it was embarrassing.

roger-aronoff-chris-plante-don-irvine“It’s so unbalanced, it’s so unfair, and it’s never been worse than it is now with Barack Obama and now Hillary Clinton jumping into the fray,” he said. “We’re going to see a new a layer, a new level. But the coverage of President Obama over the last six years has been deplorable. It’s been Third World, it’s been Soviet-style reporting.”

Irvine founded AIM in 1969 to combat biased media coverage, particularly coverage of the Vietnam War. Irvine felt that Walter Cronkite, in particular, “contributed a great deal to our defeat in Vietnam.”

“Walter Cronkite actually came over to the house a couple of times when I was a kid, and I thought, ‘Gee, it’s Uncle Walter. What a great guy,’” observed Plante. “Now, in retrospect, I’m not very impressed with the news media.”

Plante said that his Reed Irvine Award for Excellence in Journalism would be “displayed prominently and proudly because of Reed Irvine’s legacy and the importance of what he started.” He talked about the award a couple of days later on his show: [click on play button below]

A biased media actually stand in the way of stewarding our effective democracy, argued Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), founder and Chairman of the Media Fairness Caucus.

rap-lamar-smith-don-irvine“We rely upon the media to tell us what the facts are and if they don’t give us the facts, the American people can’t make good decisions,” he said. “And if the American people can’t make good decisions that’s when we lose our form of democracy.”

The caucus says to the media “give the American people the facts” and “don’t tell them what to think,” Rep. Smith said, calling AIM a “stalwart ally.” He received AIM’s Reed Irvine Award for Accountability in Journalism.

Here is an edited version of the comments that night from the three Reed Irvine Award winners: