John Stossel, “scourge of the liberal media,” has written a second book, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel — Why Everything You Know is Wrong which, unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to read yet. However, I did get a chance to hear Stossel speak about his new book Tuesday at the Cato Institute.
“Critics frequently accuse him of bias,” said Cato executive vice president David Boaz, who introduced Stossel. “What they mean is that he does not share the prevailing bias in American journalism: against markets, against individual choice and responsibility, and in favor of government regulation.”
“Sometimes it’s easy for a uniform bias to masquerade as journalistic objectivity,” Boaz said.
Stossel, now a television reporter for ABC News who presents on the news magazine show 20/20, has received 19 Emmy awards and many other journalism awards for his reporting on government regulation.
Stossel talks about the benefits of markets and how, after years of consumer reporting, he slowly came to realize those benefits.
I don’t want to ruin the talk for you, so I won’t say any more, but let me say that Stossel was very good, as always. Instead, listen (MP3) and judge for yourself. I read his previous book, Give Me a Break, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on his new book.
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Kevin Fields
May 27, 2006
Bah. Stossell is full of shit half the time, “get out the shovel” indeed! If he gets it wrong, he doesn’t apologise, he just buries it.
Michael Hampton
May 27, 2006
And what exactly did he get wrong and fail to acknowledge? Or are you just repeating the lies the liberal wackos spread without checking for yourself?
Scott
May 28, 2006
All I have to say is
Michael Hampton… 1
Kevin Fields…… 0
Ouch!
Kevin Fields
May 30, 2006
I stopped listening to anything Stossel had to say back in 2000, after he stated that organic-grown vegetables were more of a threat to the human food chain than conventional-grown vegetables that are chock full of chemicals. Turns out he didn’t conduct some of the tests he said and other parts of his claims relied on lobbists for the pesticide industry rather than any actual research.
But I didn’t have to dig up any liberal untruths to know that. I knew this because I grew up on farms my entire life. That was enough for me to consider him a bullshitter. After I started looking at other claims he has made, though, I was convinced that not everything he says is the truth.
I’m not sure when Stossel stopped being a real journalist and started to become an news entertainer, but he’s got enough lies in his book that I cannot consider him with much credibility at all. Oh sure, he makes a lot of valid points, I’m sure he’s still making them, but he’s said enough and done enough that I just do not trust him, I can’t invest time in trying to decide whether or not he’s working for the common good or if he’s working for ratings.
He’s the main reason I stopped watching ABC’s 20/20 even, and started paying more attention to reports from NPR and BBC.
I saw a commercial recently that Stossel was going to be hosting an event aimed at informing parents just how much money their schools are wasting in the public education system. I’m sure they are. It costs $50/person to attend the event. So it’s clear to me that Stossel has a large financial interest in this speaking engagement. I’m not against anybody making money, but again because I no longer trust Stossel’s reputation, I’m not certain as to how credible his information is or whether it’s even worth $50 to listen to.
Michael Hampton
May 30, 2006
Oh yes, that incident. It’s well documented, in fact, that ABC News made an error. Stossel even went on the air and apologized for the error. You must have missed that episode.
As for everything else he’s said, I’ve certainly seen much that’s controversial, but I haven’t yet found any actual errors in his reporting. I’m interested to hear what you found in his book that was a lie, as I must have missed it — and I’m fairly well attuned to such things.
I don’t think Stossel ever stopped being a journalist. I think he shook off many of the biases which permeate today’s so-called journalism, and by so doing, he’s of course going to reach different conclusions.
Michael Hampton
May 30, 2006
P.S. Stossel donates all his speaking fees to charity.
Max
Jun 02, 2006
Sorry…
One more, in which JS manages to make the argument that someone gouging $20 for a bottle of water during the Katrina Disaster is, in reality, a lifesaver:
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/
Un-effing-believable.
Max
Jun 02, 2006
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=19
and
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1134
In particular.
Also:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh011706.shtml
and
http://dir.salon.com/story/media/feature/2000/02/25/stossel/index.html?pn=1
He’s a shill for, among others, the Heritage Foundation.
One quick excerpt from Salon:
“Another guide (accompanying Stossel’s “Scaring Ourselves to Death”) snidely attacks the government for changing dietary recommendations to emphasize fruits and vegetables over meat and dairy products. Ironically, most of the critics of the health scares Stossel debunks in his special are big believers in just those health recommendations. People like Bruce Ames, an internationally reknowned scientist and vocal critic of the Environmental Protection Agency believe that lower fat, higher fruit and vegetable diets fight cancer and other health problems, just like the government does. Here’s the last sentence of that guide: “Will headline hysteria and federal regulatory agencies continue to divorce public policy from reality?”
Many, if not most, of the 35 to 40 footnotes accompanying each guide cite predictably conservative sources like the Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Young Americas Foundation and the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages. They’re not exactly the sources a skeptical reader would find convincing.”
I gave up on him a long time ago. He should just start doing talk radio and give up the pretense…
Mary
Jun 04, 2006
Re: price gouging, so the mother with the dehydrated baby only has $1.00, and baby died. After the WTC attacks, store owners gave away water, sneakers, opened their doors for the Red Cross to serve people. Have you ever been to a concert in the hot sun, where water (etal) prices are prohibitive, (gouged, that is, one isn’t allowed to bring in one’s own). The law of supply and demand sets prices, one wonders why the store couldn’t get supplies, perhaps the gouger, bought them all, so none would be available to any other stores.
Michael Hampton
Jun 04, 2006
Unbelievable, maybe, but Stossel is entirely right.
The situation is quite different from going to a concert where you aren’t allowed to bring in your own food and drink. You know you’re getting gouged there, because the concert venue is screwing with the market.
In the case of the hurricane aftermath, you probably had a few people taking advantage of the situation, but by and large, if there just plain isn’t enough of X to go around, (and there wasn’t primariliy because of FEMA keeping the roads blocked!) then the prices go up.
FEMA, then, killed that woman’s baby.
Kevin Fields
Jun 12, 2006
I watched Stossel’s so-called “apology”. It wasn’t an apology, it was an admission that he got busted and a plea that we all move on and forget it about it.
As for any further lies that are in the book, I have no idea, I stopped reading it after the first two pages. As I said, Stossel has no credibility in my eyes any further and I cannot and do not trust him as a journalist. He’s said too much and done too little over the last decade to fix that.
And I disagree that he shook off some sort of magical bias that holds other jounralists back. The only thing he shook off, IMO, is the ability to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and picked up the ability to spin stories in order to create sensational headlines that attempt to draw in more viewers and sell more books without telling you the complete truth.
He’s a shill, he’s in the business of news entertainment. He crafts the stories so that you end up agreeing with his conclusion, and doesn’t leave you room to reach your own conclusion.
Peter Gibbons
Sep 08, 2006
Aw, who cares about that baby anyway. It was just going to end up on welfare and run up a huge and unpaid cellphone bill. Stereotypes are there for a reason, you blind-o’s.
Larkem
Sep 22, 2006
It seems odd to me that there should be any question of the issues in the public school. All who are against vouchers seem to be extremely and venomously opposed to even trying vouchers? I always wonder why they would be opposed to them so vehemently. The answer of “do vouchers work†would be so easily tested. Give it a try for 10 to 15 years and see if the students are better educated when a free market is available (we certainly couldn’t be doing them a greater harm – particularly in the inner cities). Those who oppose them would never consider giving them a try and testing the results. I say that vouchers would work. I have no problem setting a free market system in place and testing the results. What exactly do opponents to vouchers fear by testing a free market system? If they believe that vouchers would have deleterious effects, a testing of the free market would certainly reveal it, but if they do work and students overall receive a better education, wouldn’t that be advantageous to the most disadvantaged in our society?
Nov 24, 2006
New Hampshire Liberty Forum - Homeland Stupidity
MWB
Mar 26, 2011
Government closed roads after a Cat 5 hurricane and FEMA killed her baby?! That my friends is The Conservative “Mind” nearly in haiku.
As the man said “if men were angels no government would be necessary…”