Media watchdog still going strong

"A miserable, carping, retromingent vigilante" is the way former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee once described the founder of Accuracy in Media, the nation's oldest media watchdog organization. Even if you don't know what retromingent means ("urinating backwards," actually), it's pretty clear that Reed Irvine wasn't the darling of what he liked to call "the left-wing media."

Reed Irvine, a Utah native who lived just outside the beltway in Maryland for decades, is considered by some to have paved the way, ideologically, for all the conservative talk shows and Web sites to follow. And Accuracy in Media (AIM) still ruffles feathers as it goes about its business of shooting at media it considers inaccurate and biased. The group got lots of print last fall when it attacked CBS for its handling of stories about President Bush's National Guard service — accusations that eventually cost veteran anchor Dan Rather his job.

AIM's chairman is now Reed's son Don, who continues his father's mission to prod the liberal media. Don Irvine will be in Utah Friday to speak to the Utah College Republican State Convention.

"I'll build a case about where the media has been heading," Irvine said in a phone interview from his home in Maryland. "You still have a very liberal mind-set (in the media). We're seeing progress made, but the people making most of the decisions are the entrenched liberals."

Reed Irvine died last fall at the age of 82. Because his father had been incapacitated for some months, Don Irvine isn't sure his father could really appreciate the Dan Rather episode.

"It was kind of sad that my father was not functioning so he could see the fruits of his labor," Irvine said.

Not that the fruits are quite fruitful enough yet, he added. "CBS hasn't really truly cleaned house. . . . Rather is still employed by CBS. And should the head of CBS News still keep his job? That sows the seeds of distrust."

Irvine, who still has ties to Utah (his daughter attends Brigham Young University), said he grew up in a "very conservative" household but that his father actually started out his career as a liberal.

"He went to the University of Utah, where he got very enamored of socialism, and he spent a good portion of his adult life following that edict."

His father's ideology shifted after meeting what Irvine categorizes as "hard-core anti-communists." During the Vietnam War, Reed Irvine joined a group that later became Accuracy in Media, which argued that newspapers and the networks weren't reporting the war accurately. "Do you understand how brutal communists can be?" Irvine says his father asked. "But no one wanted to listen, for the most part."