John Stossel

John Stossel
John Stossel speaking at the Free State Project's New Hampshire Liberty Forum.
Born	March 6, 1947 (1947-03-06) (age 62) Chicago Heights, Illinois, United States
Education	B.A. in Psychology, Princeton University (1969)
Occupation	Journalist, author, columnist, reporter
Spouse(s)	Ellen Abrams

John F. Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is a consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author, libertarian columnist, and former co-anchor for the ABC News show 20/20.^[1] Stossel began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV and later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City before joining ABC News as consumer editor and reporter on Good Morning America. Stossel went on to be an ABC News correspondent, joining the weekly news magazine program 20/20. In his decades as a reporter, Stossel has received numerous honors and awards. Stossel has also written two books entitled Give Me a Break and Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.

Stossel practices advocacy journalism where he often challenges "conventional wisdom".^[2] His reports, a blend of commentary and reporting, reflect a libertarian political philosophy and his views on economics are largely supportive of the free market.^[3] ABC is reported to believe "his reporting goes against the grain of the established media and offers the network something fresh and different...[but] makes him a target of the groups he offends."^[4] Stossel has won nineteen Emmy awards.^[5] John Stossel is doctor honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquín.

It was announced in September 2009 that Stossel would be leaving ABC News and joining Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network.^[6] He currently hosts a weekly one-hour show Stossel.

Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Career 2.1 20/20 2.2 Fox News Channel & Fox Business Network 2.3 Publications 2.4 Public appearances 3 Political beliefs 3.1 Contrarianism 3.2 Libertarianism 4 Praise and criticism 4.1 Awards 4.2 Praise 4.3 Criticism 5 Controversies 5.1 Accusation of conflict of interest 5.2 Galbraith and Stossel 5.3 Organic vegetables 5.4 Frederick K. Price 5.5 "Sick Sob Stories" 5.6 Global warming 5.7 David Schultz incident 6 Personal life 7 Notes 8 Further reading 9 External links 9.1 Biographies of and articles about Stossel 9.2 Articles by Stossel 9.3 Stossel supporters and critics

Early life and career

John Stossel was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the second of two boys^[7] to a Jewish family, and graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. He overcame a stuttering problem so he could become a reporter, and is now a supporter and advocate for The Stuttering Foundation. 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. He later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City before joining ABC News in 1981 as consumer editor and reporter on Good Morning America.

Career

20/20

Stossel was named co-anchor of ABC News' 20/20 in May 2003. He joined the weekly news magazine program in 1981, initially as a correspondent. His "Give Me a Break" segments featured a skeptical look at subjects from government regulations and pop culture to censorship and unfounded fear. The series was spun off into a series of one-hour specials (which, Stossel stated in an interview with ReasonTV, cost ABC half a million dollars per Special), beginning in 1994, with titles including:

• Give Me a Break - Regularly
• You Can't Even Talk About it - Spring 2009 (Available)
• Bailouts and Bull (in association with ReasonTV) – Spring 2009
• John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics: Fall 2008
• Sex in America – Summer 2008
• Sick in America, Whose body is it anyway? – Fall 2007
• Cheap In America (Charities) – Summer 2007
• Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity – Summer 2007
• Cheap in America - Fall 2006
• Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids - Spring 2006 (Available)
• Privilege in America: Who's Shutting You Out? - Fall 2006
• Freeloaders - Spring 2001
• John Stossel goes to Washington – Spring 2001
• Is America #1? - Fall 1999
• Greed – Spring 1999
• Common Sense – Summer 1995
• Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?
• Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So
• Boys and Girls Are Different
• You Can't Say That!
• The Power of Belief

Fox News Channel & Fox Business Network

In September 2009, it was announced that Stossel was leaving ABC News and joining Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. He now hosts a one-hour weekly program for Fox Business Network and a series of one-hour specials for Fox News Channel, as well as making regular guest appearances on Fox News programs.

The reporter's program entitled "Stossel" debuted December 10, 2009, at 8 PM EST on Fox Business Network. The program looks at consumer-focused topics, such as civil liberties, the business of health care, and free trade. His blog, "Stossel’s Take," is published on both FOXBusiness.com and FOXNews.com.^[6][8][9]

Publications

Stossel has written two books. Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media is an autobiography documenting his career and philosophical transition from liberalism to libertarianism. It describes his opposition to government regulation, his belief in free market and private enterprise, support for tort reform, and advocacy for shifting social services from the government to private charities. It was a New York Times bestseller for 11 weeks.^[2] Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel — Why Everything You Know Is Wrong questions the validity of various conventional wisdoms, and argues that the belief he is conservative is untrue.

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 entitled "Stossel in the Classroom".^[10] In 2006, Stossel and ABC released Teaching Tools for Economics, a video series based on the National Council of Economics Education standards.^[11]

Public appearances

Stossel often makes public appearances and speeches, advocating his brand of libertarian thought.^[12]

Political beliefs

Contrarianism

Stossel's news reports and writings attempt to debunk popular beliefs. His Myths and Lies series of 20/20 specials challenges a range of widely held beliefs. He also hosted The Power of Belief (October 6, 1998), an ABC News Special that focused on assertions of the paranormal and people's desire to believe. Another report outlined the belief that opposition to DDT is misplaced and that the ban on DDT has resulted in the deaths of millions of children,^[13] mostly in poor nations.^[14]

Libertarianism

As a libertarian, Stossel says that he believes in both personal freedom^[15] and the free market. He frequently uses television airtime to advance these views and challenge viewers' distrust of free market capitalism and economic competition. He received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Francisco Marroquin University, a libertarian university in Guatemala, in 2008. He told The Oregonian, on October 26, 1994:

“

I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market.[16]

”

“

I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.[17]

”

Stossel argues that personal greed creates an incentive to work and to innovate.^[18] 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.^[19] Referring to educational tests that rank American students lower than others he says:

“

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.[20]

”

He has also criticized government programs as inefficient, wasteful, and harmful.^[21]

Stossel opposes corporate welfare and bailouts.^[22]

He opposes legal prohibitions against pornography, marijuana, gambling, ticket scalping, prostitution, homosexual activity, and assisted suicide^[23], in addition to his support for almost all forms of abortion in the U.S.^{[citation needed]}

Stossel supports the FairTax to replace the income tax.

He opposes the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.^[5]

Praise and criticism

Awards

Stossel has won 19 Emmy Awards. He was 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. 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'".^[24] According to Stossel, when he was in favor of government intervention and skeptical of business he was deluged with awards, but in 2006 he joked, "They like me less... Once I started applying the same skepticism to government, I stopped winning awards."^[17]

Praise

Libertarian Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman lauded John Stossel saying, "Stossel is that rare creature, a TV commentator who understands economics, in all its subtlety."^[25] P. J. O'Rourke, best-selling author of Eat the Rich and Parliament of Whores praised Stossel saying, "... about John Stossel’s fact-finding. He seeks the truths that destroy truisms, wields reason against all that’s unreasonable, and ... puncture(s) sanctimonious idealism. ... He makes the maddening mad. And Stossel’s tales of the outrageous are outrageously amusing.”^[25] Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes Magazine, described Stossel as riveting and "one of America’s ablest and most courageous journalists."^[25] An article published by the libertarian group Advocates for Self Government notes praise for Stossel.^[26] Anthony Gregory, writing on the libertarian blog, LewRockwell.com, described Stossel as a "heroic rogue... a media maverick and proponent of freedom in an otherwise statist, conformist mass media."^[27] Libertarian investment analyst Mark Skousen said Stossel is "a true libertarian hero."^[28]

Criticism

Left-leaning news monitoring organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters for America (MMfA), have criticized Stossel's work,^[29][30] for what was perceived by those groups as a lack of balance of coverage and distortion of facts. For example, Stossel was criticized for a segment on his October 11, 1999, show during which he argued that AIDS research has received too much funding, "25 times more than on Parkinson's, which kills more people." FAIR responded that, "In fact, AIDS killed more than 16,000 people in the United States in 1999," whereas Parkinson's averaged "a death toll in the United States of less than 4,000 per year."^[31] However, the NVSR reported 14,593 deaths related to Parkinson's Disease in 1999^[32] and 14,802 deaths related to AIDS in 1999.^[33] Stossel claims in his books that he also receives criticism from the political right, because of his libertarian stance on such issues as drug legalization.

Controversies

Accusation of conflict of interest

In a February 2000 Salon.com feature on Stossell entitled "Prime-time propagandist", David Mastio wrote that Stossel has a conflict of interest in donating profits from his public speaking engagements to, among others, a non-profit called "Stossel in the Classroom" which includes material for use in schools, some of which uses material made by Stossel.^[34][35]

Galbraith and Stossel

Liberal economist James K. Galbraith said that Stossel, in a story on laissez-faire economics in September 1999, used an out of context clip of Galbraith to make it seem that Galbraith had said nearly the opposite of what he meant. Stossel denied that Galbraith's views had been misrepresented but changed the words with which he introduced the Galbraith clip in rebroadcasts of the program.^[36][37][38]

Organic vegetables

A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on 20/20 included statements by Stossel that tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue, and that organic food was more likely to be contaminated by E. coli bacteria. The Environmental Working Group objected to his report, mainly questioning his statements about bacteria, but also managed to determine that the produce had never been tested for pesticides. They communicated this to Stossel, but after the story's producer backed Stossel's recollection that the test results had been as described, the story was rebroadcast months later, uncorrected, and with a postscript in which Stossel reiterated his claim. Later, after a report in The New York Times confirmed the Environmental Working Group's claims, ABC News suspended the producer of the segment for a month and reprimanded Stossel. Stossel apologized, saying that he had thought the tests had been conducted as reported. However, he asserted that the gist of his report had been accurate.^{[39][40][41][42][43]}

Frederick K. Price

In a March 2007 segment about finances and lifestyles of televangelists, 20/20 aired a clip of Rev. Frederick K. Price, a TV minister, that was originally broadcast by the Lifetime Network in 1997. Price alleged that the clip portrayed him describing his wealth in extravagant terms, when he was actually telling a parable about a rich man. ABC News twice aired a retraction and apologized for the error.^[44][45]

"Sick Sob Stories"

In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal in September 2007 called "Sick Sob Stories", Stossel described the case of Tracy and Julie Pierce that was explored in Michael Moore's film, Sicko.^[46] Julie Pierce criticized Stossel, saying her husband would have been saved by the Canadian health care system, and she thought Stossel should have interviewed her and her doctor before writing about them.^[47] Stossel expressed sympathy, but said she had been misled to believe the treatment was routinely available in Canada. He said that the treatment is also considered "experimental" in Canada, and is provided there even more rarely than in the U.S.^[48]

Global warming

He challenges the notion that man-made climate change would have net negative consequences, pointing to warmer periods in human history.^[49] Central to his argument is the idea that groups and individuals get much more public attention, donations, and government funding when they proclaim "this will be terrible" than groups that say "this is nothing to worry about." He points to groups like the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and to activists such as Rachel Carson and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore as examples of environmental scaremongers.^[50]

At Live Earth New York, Stossel was one of a handful of media personalities named by environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as "these Flat Earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public, and telling you that global warming doesn't exist...."^[51][52] In 2001, the liberal media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting criticized Stossel's reportage of global warming in his documentary, Tampering with Nature, for using "highly selective...information" that gave "center stage to three dissenters from among the 2,000 members of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which recently released a report stating that global temperatures are rising almost twice as fast as previously thought."^[53]

In a 2006 discussion hosted by the Fraser Institute, Stossel stated that he accepts that global warming has occurred in the past century, has been about one degree, and that manmade emissions "may be part of the cause." He also groups environmental groups with astrologers and psychics in his second book. He stated that the "myths" come in with the debate about proposed solutions to reduce global warming, which he argues will not solve the problem at all and will restrict people's freedom.^[5]

David Schultz incident

On December 28, 1984, during an interview for 20/20 on professional wrestling, wrestler David Schultz struck Stossel after Stossel asked whether professional wrestling was fake. Stossel stated that he suffered from pain and buzzing in his ears eight weeks after the assault.^[54] Stossel sued and obtained a settlement of $425,000 from the WWF. In his book, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, he writes that he has come to regret doing so, having adopted the belief that lawsuits harm hundreds of innocent people.^[55][56] Schultz maintains that he attacked Stossel on orders from Vince McMahon, the head of the then-WWF.^[57]

Personal life

He lives in New York City with his wife, Ellen Abrams. He has two grown children.^[58] John's older brother, Thomas P. Stossel,^[7] is a hematologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital,^[59] a Harvard Medical School professor who has served on the advisory boards of Merck, Biogen Idec and Dyax,^[60] a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute,^[61] and a trustee of the American Council on Science and Health.^[62]

Notes

Further reading

• John, Stossel (2007). Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know is Wrong (Paperback ed.). Hyperion. ISBN 0-78689-393-1. 
• John, Stossel (2005). Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media... (Paperback ed.). Harper Paperbacks. ISBN 0-06-052915-6. 

External links

• "John Stossel's Take", John Stossel's blog at Fox Business
• John Stossel at the Internet Movie Database
• Harper Collins (Publisher) - Biography at Publisher's website
• John Stossel at TV.com
• American Justice Partnership (2005-12-12). "Special Interview...Steve Hantler (of) John Stossel" (17 minute MP3 audio). http://www.legalreforminthenews.com/Interviews/Stossel_Hantler_Interview.html. Retrieved 2007-10-14. 
• John Stossel--Junk Journalist for Corporate Agribusiness

Biographies of and articles about Stossel

• ABC News Biography
• "Laissez-Faire TV", An 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
• Sullum, Jacob. "Risky Journalism: ABC's John Stossel bucks a fearful establishment" Reason, April 1997.

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.

Stossel supporters and critics

• Support John Stossel by Competitive Enterprise Institute
• John Stossel profiled by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
• John Stossel profiled by Media Matters for America

v • d • e Anchors of 20/20 Current: Elizabeth Vargas • Chris Cuomo Past: Harold Hayes • Robert Hughes • Hugh Downs • Barbara Walters • John Miller • John Stossel

Persondata
NAME	Stossel, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	John Stossel is a consumer reporter, author and co-anchor for the ABC News show 20/20.
DATE OF BIRTH	1947
PLACE OF BIRTH	Chicago Heights, IL
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH