Reed Irvine

The founder and longtime chairman of Accuracy in Media and its sister organization, Accuracy in Academia, Mr. Irvine was an economist, Fulbright scholar and former Federal Reserve official who served in the Pacific in World War II as a Japanese language officer with the 2nd Marine Division. He launched Accuracy in Media (AIM) in 1969 and its sister organization, Accuracy in Academia, in 1985. Reed Irvine was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, 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 campaigns of Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa as an intelligence officer with the 2nd Marine Division, and served in the occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1948. Upon his return from Japan, Mr. Irvine was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied from 1949 to 1951, earning a B. Lit. Degree in economics. He joined the Federal Reserve Board in 1951 as an economist in the Far East Section of the Division of International Finance. An early critic of central planning and excessive dependence on foreign aid, he lectured and wrote extensively about free market economics, advocating sound monetary and fiscal politics, and encouraging private enterprise and investment as the best policies for developing countries. Mr. Irvine chaired Washington, D.C. luncheon/discussion groups, including the International Economists Club and the Arthur G. McDowell Luncheon Group, named in honor of an anti-Communist union official. The idea for Accuracy in Media, an organization to combat error and distortion in the news media, grew out of a discussion that he had at one of these monthly meetings in 1969, when the anti-Vietnam War message was being delivered to the public on the nightly news. Mr. Irvine served as AIM chairman and editor of the AIM Report for over 30 years. In 2002, he became chairman emeritus after his son Donald, executive secretary of the board and longtime overseer of finances and company operations policies, succeeded him as chairman. At that time, Mr. Irvine also assumed the post of AIM Report publisher when Cliff Kincaid, veteran journalist, author, media critic and longtime AIM associate, was named editor of the AIM Report. Mr. Irvine was a member of the Derwood Ward of the L.D.S. Church.