AIM In Textbooks & Reality
It’s a new media world. No longer do
the evening news programs of the three major broadcasting networks control what
we know, although liberal actor George Clooney has said that he would like to
return to the time when we all had the same “facts.” The liberal establishment,
though still in control of
programming, such as Oprah, and major newspapers, including the New York Times
and Washington Post, no longer has a monopoly on the flow of information to the
public.
Conservative bloggers¯derided as people wearing pajamas in front of their
computers¯knocked off Dan Rather after exposing his phony Bush National Guard
documents. We honored some of them with the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media
Journalism Award.
Put out to pasture and disgraced,
Rather has sought refuge on Mark Cuban’s high definition channel, seen in only a
couple million homes.
Accuracy in Media is the organization that started the media revolution
almost 40 years ago by questioning the wisdom being handed down from Walter
Cronkite and the so-called mainstream media. We launched the “Can Dan” movement,
taught people to be skeptical of what they see, read, and hear, and we took out
stock in major media companies, going to their annual shareholder meetings to
subject the top brass to a grilling about their news practices. We are
independent, confronting liberal and conservative news organizations when
necessary.
Unfortunately, one major college textbook can’t get the basic facts
straight about our founding.
During a recent visit to
university bookstore of the textbook for the communications class, a book by
Doris Graber titled, book “Mass
Media and American Politics.” It is described as the “classic text on the
mass media.” Graber has a reference in her book to Accuracy in Media, saying we
were formed during the 1980s. In fact, AIM was founded in
1969.
Students pay $56.95 for this textbook.
I emailed her, asking for a correction, and haven’t heard back. Perhaps
you could have more luck. She can be contacted here.