Stossel Blasts the 'Socialist Media' for View of Capitalism

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The media have seemed to have forgotten what has made this country prosperous according to ABC's John Stossel.

Stossel told an audience at the Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 4 in New York that the media propagate an anti-capitalist sentiment.

"The socialist media - maybe they will just never get it," Stossel said. "Their world view is anti-capitalist. [Ludwig] von Mises wrote about it in 1972 and it's just very hard to change. I would also argue the scientific community is as well."

The ABC "20/20" host based that notion on his experience from being a consumer reporter. "[A]s I've done my consumer reporting, just to elaborate on that, I think what's fueling a lot of this is a general hatred of capitalism," Stossel said.

Stossel, author of Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know is Wrong, said being a conservative in New York City was like being as unpopular as a child molester. He said he even encountered some hatred personally.

"[I]'m trying to figure out what's the hatred," Stossel said. "It's because I'm a consumer reporter defending business and people hate business. So, I'm trying to understand why do they hate business so much. I thought - some people have said ‘the envy of the wealth.' Some people want so much more and they figure it's a zero-sum game."

He tied this ill-will about business and capitalism to global warming by saying the alarmism fed off of this sentiment.

"In our intuitive understanding of this zero-sum game - you made a profit off of me and I must have lost," Stossel said. "That economic ignorance makes people hate business and I think this global warming movement feeds on it."