November 18, 2004
LAST LAUGH:
Reed Irvine, R. I. P. (Malcolm A. Kline, November 17, 2004, Campus Report)
Accuracy in Academia (AIA)’s founder, Reed Irvine, died November 16, 2004 at the age of 82. Born in 1922, he served his country in World War II as a marine. He really never stopped serving his country.He started Accuracy in Media (AIM), AIA’s parent organization, in 1969, to scrutinize the then-dominant old media at a time when few questioned its reporting. From the time he retired as a Federal Reserve Board economist in the 1970s until late last year, when he suffered a serious heart attack, he worked for AIM full-time.
It is fair to say that the so-called new media—Fox News, talk radio and even internet blogs—that prove the reporting of the venerable CBS News and company to be inaccurate are rushing through a door that Reed Irvine opened when he started going head-to-head with media heavyweights such as then-Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.
Saw a report about this a few days ago, but figured we'd run the NY Times obit. Now it appears there may not be one. They used an AP one and don't have even that posted at their Obituaries page--think they'd treat the death of a comparable man of the Left, a Ralph Neas or a Barry Lynn--similarly? Kind of a cool way to go out, proving your point on the way.
UPDATE:
They finally caught up, Reed Irvine, 82, the Founder of a Media Criticism Group, Dies (MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN, November 19, 2004, NY Times)
Founded in 1969, Accuracy in Media is a group that, as Mr. Irvine described it, was intended to be "representative of the consumers of the journalistic product and not the producers." Outlining its mission, he said that AIM would "investigate complaints, take proven cases to top media officials, seek corrections and mobilize public pressure to bring about remedial action."Posted by Orrin Judd at November 18, 2004 3:59 PMIdeologically, it paved the way for the tide of conservative talk shows, Web sites and news programming that would follow decades later. [...]
"I think AIM really was the fountainhead of the effort to denounce the liberal media, and create the image of the mainstream media as very liberal," Alex S. Jones, the director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said in a telephone interview yesterday. "And that effort has proved quite successful."
Speaking of media blind spots, I've been wondering where the war movies are? Obviously the stereotype is that the liberal Hollywood elite or whatnot doesn't want to make movies or product glorifying the WOT, but isn't it an industry open enough to competition that someone must be willing to make a buck by condescending to entertain patriotic Americans? The apparent lack of interest in following up on the success of The Passion may show that in fact Hollywood isn't purely motivated by pursuit of the Almighty Dollar.
Basically, what I'm wondering is what studio wants to become the Fox News of the movie biz?
Posted by: brian at November 18, 2004 4:54 PMI don't think it's necessarily that, Brian, but that the studios haven't yet either found scripts that they like or have completed their projects. No way will they pass up revenues like that, even for a project as "offensive" to Hollywood sensibilities as "The Passion". I note that NBC has a splashy short-run series called "Revelations" set to run early next year based on the Biblical book of the same name; apparently it features a skeptic-turned-believer and a nun racing around the world battling Satanists and trying to head off the Apocalypse at the pass.
Posted by: Joe at November 18, 2004 5:40 PMIn the Big Brawl Deuce you could depict Germans and Japanese as the bad guys (John Wayne's famous "Tojo's gang of bug-eyed monkeys" from The Fighting Sea-Bees). These days, oh no, you can't actually portray a person of the Arabic persuasion as being anything less than a paragon of nobility and honor. I'd love to see a big Hollywood film depicting the War on Terror in a good light but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Posted by: Governor Breck at November 18, 2004 6:57 PMMost Vietnam movies came out in the 80s and 90s, terrorists-in-Lebanon movies didn't come until Reagan had left office, and we're still making WW II movies...
It takes a while to determine what the narrative of the war will be.
Black Hawk Down came out eight years after the Mogadishu raid.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 18, 2004 7:19 PMMichael: WWII movies were being made before the last planes had stopped bombing Pearl Harbor.
Gov: You say you would "love to see a big Hollywood film depicting the War on Terror in a good light" and you're certainly not alone, which is why it is so inexplicable that someone isn't stepping forward to fill the void.
Posted by: brian at November 18, 2004 7:31 PMYeah, where is the market when you need it?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 18, 2004 8:35 PMI think at this point more than half the take of a blockbuster movie comes from overseas. You can't show Arabs as the bad guys or, at this point, the US Army as the good guys, and make the money you need internationally.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 18, 2004 10:13 PMI bet the success of that Jesus movie didn't depend greatly on Arab ticket buyers.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 19, 2004 1:09 PMHarry:
Yes, if Hollywood made better movies they could make their money here. But in pursuing foreign dollars they've dumbed them down.
Posted by: oj at November 19, 2004 1:15 PMI see. Another market failure to deliver the goods.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 19, 2004 5:12 PMHarry:
It does deliver the goods, they just don't come from Hollywood. The Passion was made, is excellent, and made money. Thus, the market.
Posted by: oj at November 19, 2004 5:22 PMGiven that the NYTimes decided to run an obit after OJ taunted them, could it be that someone at that organization is reading the BroJu?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at November 19, 2004 7:48 PMThe movie industry isn't an open market.
The chokepoint is distribution, which is what nearly did in The Passion.
In the future, independent producers will be able to directly distribute their movies to individual consumers over broadband connections; we'll see then what kind of movies get made.
Right now, a few people are having success marketing their works to churches, libraries, and schools using direct mail or telemarketing, but they're a fraction of a sliver of the entertainment industry.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 19, 2004 9:04 PM