[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 135 (Saturday, November 20, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S11796]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                              REED IRVINE

 Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I rise to commemorate the life of 
a noted conservative journalist, media critic, and a leading authority 
on media bias, Reed Irvine. Reed Irvine passed on November 16, 2004, 
and is known as the man who founded the organization Accuracy in Media. 
He leaves a legacy of fighting a left-leaning media and was a long-time 
critic of the big three networks at a time when only three network 
nightly news shows dominated the distribution of information to the 
public.
  Reed Irvine was born in Salt Lake City, UT, the son of William J. and 
Edna May Irvine. He graduated from the University of Utah at the age of 
19 in 1942, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He enlisted in the 
Navy and was selected to take a crash program in the Japanese language, 
emerging as an interpreter-translator with a commission in the U.S. 
Marine Corps. He participated in the campaign of Saipan, Tinian, 
Okinawa as an intelligence officer with the 2nd Marine Division, and 
served in the occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1948.
  After the war, Mr. Irvine was an economist, Fulbright scholar and 
former Federal Reserve official. He joined the Federal Reserve Board in 
1951 as an economist in the Far East Section of the Division of 
International Finance. Mr. Irvine wrote extensively about the free 
market and advocated sound monetary and fiscal policy.
  He founded Accuracy in Media in 1969 and its sister organization, 
Accuracy in Academia, in 1985. Mr. Irvine pioneered the concept of a 
citizens' media watchdog organization that criticized the errors and 
omissions of the mainstream press, buying ads to publicize serious 
errors and buying stock in media companies to enable Accuracy in Media 
representatives to attend their annual meetings to discuss its 
complaints with the chairman. Irvine was tenacious in his quest for the 
full truth in media.
  Mr. Irvine is survived by his wife of 56 years, Kay Araki Irvine, his 
son and three grandchildren. Reed Irvine will be remembered as being at 
the forefront of the conservative movement's attack on media bias and 
has left us four books that study the bias of the media.

  In 1969, when Reed Irvine began his crusade, most Americans trusted 
the mainstream media. Americans received the biased news coverage and 
believed it. Today, the liberal bias in media, Hollywood, and academia 
is widely accepted as a fact of life.
  Some day, I hope that the mainstream media will lose its leftwing 
bias. I hope for the day when academia will focus all its attention on 
scholarship and leave the liberal indoctrination for the pundits. But, 
I do not expect those days to come very soon. However, thanks in large 
part to the life's work of Reed Irvine and the movement he helped 
launch, Americans have now accepted media bias as a fact of life. The 
American Society of Newspapers published a study in 1999 that showed 78 
percent of Americans believe there is a bias in the media.
  I believe this understanding by the American public promotes a more 
informed democracy. People watch the news with a critical eye. Students 
question their professors. Americans are seeking out talk radio, 
alternative media. The Internet is flourishing.
  Thanks to dedicated watchdogs such as Reed Irvine, the American 
people now see through the bias in the media. Dan Rather's ludicrous 
reporting on President Bush's National Guard service was debunked in no 
time on the Internet and talk radio. A liberal bias that was once 
lamented by conservatives and ignored by the public has now become a 
running joke among conservatives and an accepted fact in the minds of 
Americans. People, who once powerlessly accepted the news however they 
could get it, are now voting with their remote controls.
  When President Bush delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican 
National Convention this year, 7.3 million people saw it on Fox. 
Meanwhile, 5.9 million watched on NBC, 5.1 million on ABC, 5 million on 
CBS, 2.7 million on CNN and 1.7 million on MSNBC, according to Nielsen 
Media Research. Fox also beat the broadcast networks throughout the 
rest of the Republican Convention coverage--this, despite the fact that 
ABC, CBS, and NBC are available in about 110 million homes, while Fox 
is carried in about 85 million. Reed Irvine's message has been 
received, and the people are fighting back.
  News is now reported in countless ways, 24 hours a day, and the 
American people are deciding for themselves what it all means. For this 
new coverage we can thank the Fox News channel, and the countless talk 
show hosts, magazines, Internet sites, and organizations. However, I 
think the most important gift that has been given to our country is the 
critical eye of the American public. A voting public that watches the 
news with a critical eye is one that cannot be easily manipulated. A 
college student who asks his professor tough questions will end up 
better educated and ready for the world.
  For this wonderful gift, we owe a special thanks to Reed 
Irvine.

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