Taking AIM to AU

Early this month, the incomparable Ruth Malhotra and I debated the state of academic freedom with two professors from American University in a forum on campus. It’s interesting that the debate organizers could find two liberals in their own backyard but had to go off campus to line up two conservatives.

Ruth, our readers may remember, is the Georgia Tech senior given a failing grade by her professor for attending the Conservative Political Action Conference two years ago. The two professors—John Watson and John Doolittle—were civil enough but, I must confess, I had a much more pleasant encounter with the liberal professor I met two days later—Ward Churchill.

For his part, Dr. Watson offered this example of making a distinction between fact and opinion: “Ronald Reagan ending the Cold War is an opinion, not a fact.” I pointed out to him that the timeline worked against that theory and that the “opinion” that the Great Communicator emerged victorious from the Cold War was one that was expressed not only by admirers of the late president but by the losers in the conflict who were in a position to know.

In an hour and a half, neither professor delivered one verifiable fact. Dr. Doolittle teaches Broadcast Journalism. “I use a textbook by Robert McChesney that is critical of The New York Times but I personally like The New York Times,” Dr. Doolittle said.

McChesney’s thesis is that The New York Times is slanted to the political right because it is a rich corporation. That was Dr. Doolittle’s idea of balance.

I couldn’t resist. “Professor,” I said, “If you really want to balance your course, I can give you a bunch of media monitors published by Accuracy in Media.” Within about 30 seconds, this got a snort, a shake and a spasm.

“I asked Reed Irvine years ago why he thought the media was so liberal, and do you know what he said?,” he asked me. “He said, ‘Because it’s fashionable.”

Dr. Doolittle left a pause after this anecdote. I was reminded of the title of the last hit song the late Peggy Lee ever sang; Is that all there is?

Really, three decades of AIM’s relentless fact-checking in newspaper columns, books, newsletters, broadcasts and documentaries yielded not one shred of information unearthed that Dr. Doolittle could dispute. All the more remarkable given the reams of space Reed Irvine, Cliff Kincaid and Roger Aronoff have devoted to exposing the fallacies of Dr. Doolittle’s favorite newspaper—The New York Times.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.