In my last post I showed the difference between Media Research Center and what could be considered it's liberal counterparts. "Media Matters For America" and "Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting" (FAIR) are the most infamous. The difference is simple: MRC is about bias not accuracy. The blog Left Hook explained this further. Is there a conservative media watchdog organization that cares about accuracy in journalism? Well... one has accuracy in it's name anyway: Accuracy in Media or (AIM). Is it a true counterpart to MMFA and FAIR unlike MRC? No, in fact its as far from them as MRC is.
AIM mainstreams and pushes a conspiratorial mindset engaging in speculation, distorted half-truths, and unproved assertions of fact. In their world facts are NOT irrefutable.
Since it's founding and especially in the election of Obama its legitimized the craziest conspiracy theories and has said the craziest things such as:.
- Bill Clinton was secretly involved in Vincent Forester's death.
- McCarthyism was great.
- "It is not unreasonable to ask questions about Barack Obama's birthplace"- Cliff Kincaid- Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism. He also pushes it at the 2009 CPAC convention.
- Obama might not be a Christian.
- The unanimously confirmed Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is a secret Communist, an idea also pushed by the John Birch Society.
- The Kill the Gays bill in Uganda was to confront the “Loud-mouthed Homosexual Lobby”.
- They joined Lou Dobbs in promoting the North American Union Conspiracy Myth, another conspiracy theory pushed by the John Birch Society.
Apparently this is what happens when a conservative media watch dog attempts journalistic standards. They go all over the place.
Whats more interesting about this other conservative media watchdog organization is that MRC's NewsBusters has listed them first in their list of organizations.
Notice on NewsBusters site the have a ad right below the Talk Radio section advertising the "Free Speech Alliance" ranting against the Fairness Doctrine. At that same time MRC recommends an organization such as AIM that has had more radical recommendations for media and freedom of the press.
AIM used to offer as a premium the book Target America, by AIM board member James L. Tyson, which proposed that mandatory government "ombudsmen" be placed at each of the major networks to ensure "accuracy" and "fairness" when dealing with "large, difficult questions." [Extra July/August 1998]
I 'm against the fairness doctrine btw and I'll explain why in a future post.
You know what I'd like to see? FAIR or MMFA debate with MRC or AIM. MRC was once invited to appear with MMFA to discuss the media and Obama's releasing his long form birth certificate. They chickened out and said "We don't debate Media Matters".
I though it would be unlikely that think AIM would want to engage in any civil debate with MMFA given that AIM's Cliff Kincaid slammed MMFA as "being for Gay Lovers".
But I did find 2 appearances they did on Rick Sanchez and Prime News. Former MMFA writer Paul Waldman and current MMFA writer Eric Boehlert dealt with the same clown. Enjoy watching.
Transcript if Youtube video is taken down
Ongoing coverage of AIM can be found at:
Right Wing Watch
Media Matters For America
I've been reeling from Accuracy In Media longer than from the Media Research Center (I even have a copy of "Target American" around here somewhere).
ReplyDeleteAIM's politics, which, as with the MRC, are what dictates its version of reality, are almost unspeakable. The AIM boys are rabidly pro-fascist, and that's not just a broad description of their domestic politics; I mean literally diehard supporters of the worst imaginable mass-murdering fascist regimes and movements abroad. Cliff Kincaid, their Fearless Leader, has pimped that proposed Ugandan "kill the gays" law you mentioned, but not just as a means of batting down an imaginary homosexual "lobby"--he has presented it as a noble effort to protect society. He and Reed Irvine, the now-dead founder of AIM, called Jennifer Harbury, whose husband was strapped to a table by the Guatemalan military and chopped to pieces an inch at a time, a "guerrilla groupie." They backed that government, the government of El Salvador in the '80s, Pinochet in Chile, the contras as they terrorized Nicaragua, RENAMO in Mozambique, and more others mass-murdering terrorist movements and governments than can be easily listed. They acted as apologists for U.S. Cold-War-era radiation experiments conducted on retarded children.
I'm a long-running critic of dehumanizing rhetoric in our politics, and I have no problem at all calling the AIM gang a most ghoulish gaggle of monsters.