Christopher Ruddy
Monday, Nov. 22, 2004

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  There certainly must have been some glee among the media elites to know that their longtime nemesis Reed Irvine had passed away at the age of 82.

Reed had been a thorn in the side of the major liberal media ever since he started Accuracy in Media in 1969. No doubt the mere mention of his name at Georgetown cocktail parties would elicit cackles from the elites.

But Reed was one of the few inside the Beltway who remembered about the rest of us in flyover country.

Today, media criticism is a full-time industry, with several organizations on the left and right pushing their agenda and countless media outlets offering their own version of media criticism.

But Reed was the first. He was the pioneer.

It was in the late ’60s that Federal Reserve economist Irvine conspired with Wilson “Chuck” Lucom, a wealthy Palm Beacher who had had the notoriety of serving in FDR’s administration as the youngest-ever assistant to a secretary of state, to start a group to take on the big media.

The two conceived the idea of Accuracy in Media. Here’s how it happened.

Reed and Chuck discovered that the liberal press would not even publish their letters to the editor complaining about liberal bias. They decided to put some muscle behind their letters by forming an organization.

Chuck gave the seed money. Reed became the full-time founder/president and took no salary for doing so.

In the beginning, the idea of AIM was scoffed at by the press, which tried to ignore the upstart group. That’s when Chuck came up with the brilliant idea of AIM taking out full-page newspaper ads in papers like the New York Times to attack the Times’ own coverage.

Chuck again donated the seed money for the ads, and Reed implemented the plan.

The ads caused an immediate sensation. Not only was AIM flooded with thousands of new members, but also New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger offered to meet with Irvine regularly to assess his concerns about media coverage.

Reed and AIM became like Marine invasion troops on the beachhead of the Reagan revolution then under way in the late 1970s.

My first significant dealings with Reed were in the early ’90s during my brief tenure at the New York Post, when I gained notoriety reporting on the strange death of Clinton White House deputy counsel Vince Foster.

At the time, the issue had become radioactive to most of the press. But Irvine smelled a cover-up and fearlessly picked up on my reporting to unmask it along with the media’s complicity.

Reed even went well beyond my coverage and that of other reporters like Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to unearth new evidence of official skullduggery.

Reed was fearless and passionate in pursuing such stories. He later covered the TWA Flight 800 story and demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the public had not been told the truth about that case either.

But Reed Irvine to me was more than a crusader. His individualism and tenacity were unparalleled among the many people I have met in my life.

I knew Reed was cut from a different cloth when early in the Foster case he called me at 3 a.m. to discuss a brief interview I had had on Rush Limbaugh’s TV show.

Reed offered no apology for calling so late. I soon discovered that for Reed we were at war and there were no time-outs.

Reed worked almost every day of the week even into his 80s, save for a few hours on the tennis court each weekend. I would often catch him in the office on a Sunday or a weekday night at 10 p.m.

I was aghast when I learned that after Reed’s first serious heart attack, he ignored his doctor’s advice to rest and demanded that his aide Roger Aronoff drive him immediately to AIM’s offices so he could work. He put in a half day of work and began his normal schedule the next day.

I chastised Reed about his behavior. It was like talking to a bull. Clearly, Reed was not one who accepted prevailing nostrums.

One day I remember speaking to Reed about nuclear weapons and radiation fallout. Reed then commented that such dangers were overstated.

Startled, I asked Reed how he could come to that conclusion. I recall him saying about his wife, “Kay was just a mile from ground zero when the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.” Reed said his Japanese wife had been healthy her whole life and joked that some radiation may actually be good for you.

A contrarian thinker, indeed!

Reed’s success has been well noted, but always solidly behind him was his lovely wife, Kay. Though she was in the background, I doubt Reed would have achieved what he did without her love and support.

The two met in Japan when Reed was a young interpreter under Gen. MacArthur’s army of occupation. Understandably, an American soldier marrying a Japanese woman in those days was not in vogue in either society,

But fortunately, love is blind.

Reed’s love for America was also blind.

It was difficult for me to see Reed last spring in his nursing home bed. Former CBS correspondent Wes Vernon and I visited with Reed, already suffering and emaciated from a stroke.

I had been told that Reed couldn’t communicate. Wes and I were amazed that not only was Reed alert, he also was communicating fairly well.

I encouraged him to get healthy: “We need you for one more election, Reed.” He shot back, “I think you can do a good job with this one, Chris.”

His sense of humor was still there.

Wes and I said a prayer with Reed and went our way.

America has lost one of its best Marines. He had been on duty for a long time protecting us.

Goodbye, Reed.

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