| John Stossel | |
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John Stossel outside Fox Studios after a taping of Stossel, June 9, 2010. |
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| Born | John F. Stossel March 6, 1947 Chicago Heights, Illinois |
| Education | B.A. in Psychology, Princeton University (1969) |
| Occupation | Journalist, author, columnist, reporter, TV presenter |
| Spouse(s) | Ellen Abrams |
| Religious belief(s) | Agnostic[1] |
| Notable credit(s) | 20/20 Stossel |
| Official website | |
John F. Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist. In October 2009 Stossel left his long time home on ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel, both owned and operated by News Corp. He hosts a weekly news show entitled Stossel, on Fox Business which debuted December 10, 2009, airing in prime time every Thursday repeating on both Saturdays and Sundays. Stossel also regularly provides signature analysis, appearing on various Fox News shows, including weekly appearances on The O'Reilly Factor, in addition to writing the Fox News Blog, "John Stossel's Take".[2]
Stossel practices advocacy journalism, often challenging conventional wisdom.[3] His reporting style, which is a blend of commentary and reporting, reflects a libertarian political philosophy and his views on economics are largely supportive of the free market.[4]
In his decades as a reporter, Stossel has received numerous honors and awards, including nineteen Emmy awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club.[5] John Stossel is doctor honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquín.[6] Stossel has written two books recounting how his experiences in journalism shaped his socioeconomic views, Give Me a Break in 2004 and Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity in 2007.
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 a 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, going on to become co-anchor for the ABC News show 20/20.[7]
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."[8]
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John Stossel was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the younger of two sons,[9] to a prominent Jewish family, and graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka. He overcame a stuttering problem so he could become a reporter, and is now a supporter and advocate for the Stuttering Foundation of America. 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. Stossel 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.
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[10]) cost ABC half a million dollars per Special), beginning in 1994, with titles including:
In September 2009, it was announced that Stossel was leaving ABC News and joining Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. In addition to appearing on The O'Reilly Factor every Tuesday night, 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 program, entitled Stossel, debuted December 10, 2009, 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.[13][14][15]
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.[3] 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".[16][17] It was taken over in 2006 by the Center for Independent Thought and releases a new DVD of teaching materials annually. In 2006, Stossel and ABC released Teaching Tools for Economics, a video series based on the National Council of Economics Education standards.[18]
Stossel often makes public appearances and speeches, advocating his brand of libertarian thought.[19] Stossel explained at the end of the December 30, 2010 episode of Stossel that he gives away his earnings from these engagements to charity; they contribute 25% of his income. The three main groups he supports with his donations are the The Doe Fund, the Central Park Conservancy (on whose board he sits), and Student Sponsor Partners (SSP), which partners low-income high school students with donors who mentor the students and pay tuition for the students to attend private school (usually Catholic schools), which Stossel says have higher graduation rates than public schools.[20]
Stossel and his former ABC News colleague Chris Cuomo are silent investors in Columbus Tavern, a restaurant on Columbus Avenue at 72nd Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side.[21][22][23]
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,[24] mostly in poor nations.[25]
As a libertarian, Stossel says that he believes in both personal freedom[26] 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.[27]
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.[28]
Stossel argues that personal greed creates an incentive to work and to innovate.[29] 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.[30] 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.[31]
Stossel has criticized government programs as inefficient, wasteful, and harmful.[32] He has also criticized the American legal system, opining that it provides lawyers and vexatious litigators the incentive to file frivolous lawsuits indiscriminately, which Stossel contends often generate more wealth for lawyers than deserving clients, stifle innovation and personal freedoms, and cause harm to private citizens, taxpayers, consumers and businesses.[33] Although Stossel concedes that some lawsuits are necessary in order to provide justice to people genuinely injured by others with greater economic power,[34] he advocates the adoption in the U.S. of the English rule as one method to reduce the more abusive or frivolous lawsuits.[35]
Stossel opposes corporate welfare, bailouts[36] and the war in Iraq.[5] He also opposes legal prohibitions against pornography, marijuana, gambling, ticket scalping, prostitution, homosexual activity, and assisted suicide,[37] and believes most abortions should be legal.[38] He favors replacing the income tax with the FairTax.
When President Barack Obama altered federal guidelines in April 2010 governing the employment of unpaid interns under the Fair Labor Standards Act,[39] Stossel criticized the guidelines, appearing in a police uniform during an appearance on the Fox News program America Live, commenting, "I’ve built my career on unpaid interns, and the interns told me it was great—I learned more from you than I did in college." Asked why he did not pay them if they were so valuable, he said he could not afford to.[40]
Regarding religion, Stossel identified himself as an agnostic in the December 16, 2010 episode of Stossel, explaining that he had no belief in God, but was open to the possibility.[1]
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'".[41] According to Stossel, when he was in favor of government intervention and skeptical of business he was deluged with awards, but in 2006 he stated, "They like me less... Once I started applying the same skepticism to government, I stopped winning awards."[28]
The libertarian Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman lauded Stossel, stating: "Stossel is that rare creature, a TV commentator who understands economics, in all its subtlety."[42] Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes Magazine, described Stossel as riveting and "one of America’s ablest and most courageous journalists."[42] P. J. O'Rourke, best-selling author of Eat the Rich and Parliament of Whores praised Stossel, stating:
... 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.[42]
An article published by the libertarian group Advocates for Self Government notes praise for Stossel.[43] Independent Institute Research Analyst 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."[44] Libertarian investment analyst Mark Skousen said Stossel is "a true libertarian hero".[45]
Media organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters for America (MMfA), have criticized Stossel's work,[46][47] 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."[48]
In a February 2000 Salon.com feature on Stossel 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.[49][50]
University of Texas economist, James K. Galbraith, has alleged that Stossel in his September 1999 special, Is America #1?, used an out of context clip of Galbraith to convey the notion that Galbraith advocated the adoption by Europe of the free market economics practiced by the United States, when in fact, Galbraith actually advocated that Europe adopt some of the United States' social benefit transfer mechanisms such as Social Security, which is the economically opposite view. Stossel denied any misrepresentation of Galbraith's views, and stated that it was not his intention to convey that Galbraith agreed with all of the special's ideas, but re-edited that portion of the program for its September 2000 repeat, in which Stossel paraphrased, "Even economists who like Europe's policies, like James Galbraith, now acknowledge America's success."[51][52][53]
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.[54][55][56][57][58]
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.[59][60] In August 2010, a lower court's dismissal of the minister's defamation suit against ABC, Price v. Stossel, was overturned by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.[61]
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.[62] 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.[63] 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.[64]
He challenges the notion that man-made global warming would have net negative consequences, pointing to assertedly warmer periods in human history.[65] 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.[66]
In 2001, the 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."[67]
In a 2006 discussion hosted by the Fraser Institute, Stossel stated that he accepts that global warming has occurred in the past century, that it has been about one degree Celsius, and that man-made emissions "may be part of the cause." Nevertheless he groups environmental groups with astrologers and psychics in his second book, Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity. 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]
On December 28, 1984, during an interview for 20/20 on professional wrestling, wrestler David Schultz struck Stossel after Stossel stated that he thought professional wrestling was "fake". Stossel stated that he suffered from pain and buzzing in his ears eight weeks after the assault.[68] Stossel sued and obtained a settlement of $425,000 from the World Wrestling Federation (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.[69][70] Schultz maintains that he attacked Stossel on orders from Vince McMahon, the head of the then-WWF.[71]
Stossel lives in New York City with his wife, Ellen Abrams. They have two grown children.[72]
Stossel's older brother, Thomas P. Stossel,[9] is a hematologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital,[73] and a professor at Harvard Medical School. He has served on the advisory boards of Merck, Biogen Idec and Dyax,[74] as a senior fellow at the free-market Manhattan Institute,[75] and as a trustee of the American Council on Science and Health.[76]
Stossel's nephew is the journalist and magazine editor, Scott Stossel.[77]
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