John F. Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author, libertarian columnist, and former co-anchor for the ABC News show 20/20. 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 practices advocacy journalism, in which he often challenges conventional wisdom. 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. 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." Stossel has won nineteen Emmy awards. John Stossel is doctor honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquín. 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
It was announced in September 2009 that Stossel would be leaving ABC News and joining Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. He currently hosts a weekly one-hour show, Stossel and appears weekly on The O'Reilly Factor.
"Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose.""I never wanted to be an anchor for 25 years, and suddenly I wanted to be one."
John Stossel was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the second of two boys to a prominent 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.
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
War on Drugs: A War on Ourselves — 2002
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 and Fox Business Network
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, 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.
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. 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". 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.
Public appearances
Stossel often makes public appearances and speeches, advocating his brand of libertarian thought.
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, mostly in poor nations.
Libertarianism
As a libertarian, Stossel says that he believes in both personal freedom 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:
Stossel argues that personal greed creates an incentive to work and to innovate. 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. Referring to educational tests that rank American students lower than others he says:
Stossel has criticized government programs as inefficient, wasteful, and harmful. 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. Although Stossel concedes that some lawsuits are necessary in order to provide justice to people genuinely injured by others with greater economic power, he advocates the adoption in the U.S. of the English rule as one method to reduce the more abusive or frivolous lawsuits.
Stossel opposes corporate welfare, bailouts and the war in Iraq. He also opposes legal prohibitions against pornography, marijuana, gambling, ticket scalping, prostitution, homosexual activity, and assisted suicide, and believes most abortions should be legal. 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, 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.
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'". 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."
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." 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.” Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes Magazine, described Stossel as riveting and "one of America’s ablest and most courageous journalists." An article published by the libertarian group Advocates for Self Government notes praise for Stossel. 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." Libertarian investment analyst Mark Skousen said Stossel is "a true libertarian hero."
Criticism and controversy
Watchdog groups
Progressive watch dog organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters for America (MMfA), have criticized Stossel's work, 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." However, the National Vital Statistics Report (NVSR) reported 14,593 deaths related to Parkinson's Disease in 1999 and 14,802 deaths related to AIDS in 1999.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.
Accusation of conflict of interest
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
"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. 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. 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.
Global warming
He challenges the notion that man-made global warming would have net negative consequences, pointing to warmer periods in human history. 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 andformer U.S. Vice President Al Gore as examples of environmental scaremongers.
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."
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." 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.
David Schultz incident
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. 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. Schultz maintains that he attacked Stossel on orders from Vince McMahon, the head of the then-WWF.
Stossel lives in New York City with his wife, Ellen Abrams. He has two grown children. John's older brother, Thomas P. Stossel, is a hematologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard Medical School professor who has served on the advisory boards of Merck, Biogen Idec and Dyax, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, and a trustee of the American Council on Science and Health.
