John Stossel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| John Stossel | |
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| Born | March 6, 1947 Chicago Heights, Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | Journalist, author |
John F. Stossel (born 6 March 1947) is a consumer reporter, author and co-anchor for the ABC News show 20/20.[1][2] His reports, a blend of commentary and reporting, reflect his libertarian political philosophy, his knowledge of economics (especially the Chicago school), and his skepticism of conventional wisdom.
In his decades as a reporter, Stossel has garnered 19 Emmy Awards and numerous other honors for his reports, as well as attracted criticism for his political views.
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[edit] Work
[edit] Early career
Stossel graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Psychology in 1969, and was a member of Princeton Tower Club while there. He began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon. His early years included jobs as consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City and as consumer editor at ABC's Good Morning America.
[edit] 20/20
Stossel later became an ABCNEWS correspondent, joining the weekly news magazine program 20/20 in 1981. He became its co-anchor in May, 2003.
In 20/20's "Give Me a Break" segments, Stossel takes a skeptical look at subjects ranging from government regulations and pop culture to censorship and unfounded fear. "Give Me a Break" was so popular that in 1994 it was spun off into a series of one-hour specials. Topics of these specials include:
- "Stupid in America"
- "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?"
- "Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So"
- "Boys and Girls Are Different"
- "Freeloaders"
- "Greed"
- "Is America #1?"
- "You Can't Say That!"
- "Stossel Goes to Washington"
- "The Power Of Belief"
In 1984, while filming a segment on professional wrestling, Stossel told wrestler David "Dr. D" Schultz that he thought wrestling was fake. Yelling "You think this is fake?", Schultz assaulted Stossel, slapping him and knocking him to the ground twice. Stossel sued, claiming long-term hearing loss, and won a settlement. (Stossel now regrets his decision to sue, according to his first book.) Schultz maintains that he attacked Stossel because the head of the WWF wanted him to.[3]
[edit] Books and educational materials
Stossel has written two books, the first being Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media (ISBN 0-06-052914-8). This autobiography outlines Stossel's career, documenting his philosophical transition from a liberal political stance toward libertarianism. It summarizes his opinions concerning the disasters of excessive regulation and government control, and his strong belief in the power of the free market and private enterprise. In its conclusion he calls for a reform of lawsuits, decreased regulation, and shifting social services away from the government and encouraging private charity.
His second book, published by Hyperion in May 2006, is entitled Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel--Why Everything You Know Is Wrong (ISBN 1-4013-0254-8). In this book, Stossel questions the validity of various conventional wisdoms, including the "myth" that he is a conservative.
With financial support from the libertarian Palmer R. Chitester Fund, Stossel and ABC News launched a series of educational materials for public schools in 1999 titled "Stossel in the Classroom".[4]
In September 2006, ABC News and John Stossel released a DVD series titled "Teaching Tools for Economics" based on the National Council of Economics Education standards.[5]
[edit] Philosophical influences
[edit] Libertarianism
John Stossel is one of the few libertarians in mainstream media. As a libertarian, Stossel believes in both personal freedom and the free market. He frequently uses his television airtime to advance these views, and boldly challenges viewers' distrust of free market capitalism and economic competition. Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman has described him by saying, "Stossel is that rare creature, a TV commentator who understands economics, in all its subtlety."[6]
Stossel's views have often been controversial. He has argued that greed is good, because it provides people with an incentive to work and to innovate.[7] He has promoted school choice as a way to improve American schools, because he believes that when people are given a choice they will choose the better schools for their children.[8] This, he feels, will force the worst schools to improve or shut down. Referring to international tests, which consistently show American students doing poorly compared to those in other countries, he says:
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- The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better.[9]
Over the years he has also criticized many government programs as inefficient, wasteful, and sometimes harmful.[10]
[edit] Skepticism
Many of John Stossel's news reports and writings come from his skepticism of conventional wisdom. His Myths and Lies series of 20/20 specials challenges a wide range of deeply-held beliefs. He also hosted The Power of Belief (October 6, 1998) an ABC News Special which focused on paranormal claims and people's desire to believe.
Stossel argues that "43 years of eco-hysteria over DDT" has cost the lives of millions,[11], and as a global warming skeptic he has gained many opponents. Although he agrees that global warming exists,[citation needed] he says that the science is not yet settled regarding whether the warming is caused by humans. He argues that the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Rachel Carson, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore have done a disservice by engaging in environmental scaremongering.[12]
[edit] Praise and criticism
[edit] Awards
Stossel has won many awards, including 19 Emmy Awards. In one year, according to Stossel in his book Give Me A Break, "I got so many Emmys, another winner thanked me in his acceptance speech 'for not having an entry in this category'." Stossel has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club, and has received the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the Peabody Award.
[edit] Criticism
Progressive organizations have accused Stossel of distorting or leaving out pertinent information and of showing a lack of balance in his selection of interview subjects, some of whom have corporate ties which go unmentioned.[13][14][15][16]
[edit] Pesticides and Organic Food
On the 20/20 report "The Food You Eat" on 4 February 2000, Stossel said that "[b]y a small margin, more of the organic produce was contaminated [with E. coli] than the conventional stuff. But the real bad news for you organics buyers is that the average concentration of E. coli in the spring mix was much higher. And what about pesticides? Our tests surprisingly found no pesticide residue on the conventional samples or the organic."[17] The Organic Trade Association and the progressive media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) complained that the presence of non-pathogenic strains of coliform bacteria was not a heath risk.[18][19] More seriously, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) discovered that the researchers hired by ABC had not tested any produce for pesticides. ABC ignored EWG and rebroadcast "The Food You Eat" on 7 July 2000, this time with a post-segment conversation in which Stossel once again cited the non-existent results: "It's logical to worry about pesticide residues, but in our tests, we found none on either organic or regular produce, and it's never been proven that the pesticide residues hurt anyone, yet we know there are about 5,000 deaths from bacteria, so I think you're worrying about the wrong thing."[20]
On 31 July 2000, the New York Times picked up EWG's story[21] and ABC suspended 20/20 producer David Fitzpatrick for one month and reprimanded Stossel, reportedly not so much for their mistake, "but for the arrogance of ignoring complaint letters that followed".[22][23] Fitzpatrick was later fired for "unrelated" breaches of contract.[24] On August 11th, Stossel apologized for the error and for repeating the error. "The labs we used never tested the produce for pesticides. We thought they had, but they hadn’t. We misunderstood, and that was our fault." In his apology, he repeated his belief that pesticides were not a danger in the American food supply and defended counting non-pathogenic E. Coli as the standard test for fecal contamination.[25] The danger of pesticide residues is one of the "myths" debunked in his 2006 book, "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity".[26]
[edit] Education
In January 2006, Stossel presented a 20/20 special titled "Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids," in which he argued that the public school system is ineffective in teaching students and that the U.S. should instead move to a voucher system.[27] Stossel presented charter schools that were doing well and claimed that charter schools are generally better than public schools. The progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America contends[28] that Stossel ignored research by the Department of Education which shows that public schools are actually outperforming charter schools on standardized tests[29] and that Stossel interviewed eight advocates of school choice but only two opponents. In response, Stossel points out that students in America still lag behind those in less developed countries that spend less money on education, and that this gap widens by 12th grade. He further notes that the Department of Education study, which was adjusted for demographics, itself admits that "to ascertain the difference between the two types of schools, an experiment would be conducted in which students are assigned [randomly] to either public or private schools".[30]
[edit] Global warming
In June 2001, Stossel presented a one-hour special titled "Tampering with Nature" in which he belittled a letter from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) which warned of the "devastating consequences" of global warming: "You may have heard that 1,600 scientists signed a letter warning of 'devastating consequences.' But I bet you hadn't heard that 17,000 scientists signed a petition saying that there's 'no convincing evidence' that greenhouse gases will disrupt the Earth's climate."[31] The latter petition was apparently that circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM),[32] which is funded[citation needed] by the George C. Marshall Institute, and Stossel's critics point out that its signatories included ophthalmologists, nutritionists, and professors of mechanical engineering.[33] However, OISM claims that of the final 19,700 signatures, 17,800 were independently verified to include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists. Also included were 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization were in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences.[34] Also, while the UCS petition claimed 104 of the 178 living Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and 60 U.S. National Medal of Science winners,[35] the Union of Concerned Scientists is–despite its name–an organization of "people from all walks of life".[36]
Parents of children Stossel interviewed about environmental education on Earth Day in 2001 accused Stossel of obtaining the interviews in an unethical manner. They expected the children to be interviewed by the show's producer about their thoughts on environmental issues. Instead Stossel asked "leading questions" about whether or not they were "scared" by the lessons they were being taught about the environment. The parents revoked their permission and refused to allow ABC to run their children's responses.[37]
John Stossel was also accused by Media Matters for America of misrepresenting the scientific opinion on climate change in his 10 December 2004 segment of 20/20 on Michael Crichton's book State of Fear[38][39] and elsewhere.[40]
Most recently, Stossel claimed global warming "may be a good thing", as published in Media Matters [41]
[edit] Other criticism
Unlike most other ABC News reporters, John Stossel's contract allows him to make public speaking engagements with the proviso that he not profit from them. Stossel donates the proceeds from these engagements to several charities, including the Palmer R. Chitester Fund, which produces "Stossel in the Classroom". Critics observe that a percentage of the sales of "Stossel in the Classroom" go to ABC and see a conflict of interest in this arrangement.[42][43][44][45]
[edit] External links
[edit] Biographies of, and articles about, Stossel
- ABC News Biography
- "Laissez-Faire TV", A balanced article about John Stossel from Brill's Content.
- "Stossel's evolution from activist to contrarian angers some of his fans", USA Today
- "John Stossel: Myth-Buster", FrontPageMag.com
- "John Stossel: Not Afraid to Tell the Truth", NewsMax.com
- "John Stossel - Libertarian", TheAdvocates.org
[edit] Articles by Stossel
- John Stossel's 20/20 Web Page
- John Stossel's Newspaper Columns
- "Confessions of a Welfare Queen: How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars" is an excerpt from his first book.
[edit] Stossel Critics
| Co-Anchors of 20/20 |
|---|
| Hayes • Hughes • Downs • Walters • Miller • Stossel • Vargas |
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