John Stossel

During the May 9 edition of ABC’s The View, Whoopi Goldberg made a surprising revelation to members of the audience. During an interview with Fox’s John Stossel about his new book, "No They Can't: Why Government Fails But Individuals Succeed," Goldberg disclosed that she was a member of the NRA. [Video below the jump.]

Journalist John Stossel left the liberal confines of ABC News "because it sucked there."  The libertarian reporter talked to the Heritage Foundation's Rob Bluey in an interview posted Thursday and exposed the liberal culture at his former network: "They were hostile to these ideas that have made us prosperous and I consider so important."

He added that ABC "tolerated" him and his good ratings, "But by the end, they were sort of saying, 'Oh, you're predictable, Stossel. All you want to do is libertarian economics all the time. I don't want to watch that.'" He joked that ABC preferred to do stories on how "[Michael Jackson's] still dead."

Despite slipping mostly under the radar, John Stossel disclosed something on his FBN program last Thursday that should have garnered a lot more attention.

As he chatted with guest Andrew Breitbart, Stossel admitted that the conservative publisher had offered him the James O'Keefe/Hannah Giles/ACORN scoop, but the former ABC Newser declined due to politics at the network he used to work for (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC.com on Monday accused economist Dr. Walter Williams of making racist statements during his interview with Fox News's John Stossel last week.

The charge was associated with an "Ed Show" segment in which the host disgracefully cherry-picked one of Williams' comments about welfare and slavery (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Thursday’s Stossel show on FBN, host John Stossel devoted the program to making the case that gun control can increase crime rates and that higher rates of gun ownership tend to decrease crime. Stossel admitted that, even as a libertarian, it took time for him to come around to this truth as he and most in the mainstream media live in the New York City liberal bubble, not cognizant of all the states that have passed concealed carry laws and seen crime decrease. During a segment with Dennis Hannigan of the Brady Campaign, the FBN host observed: "Over the years, more and more states changed their laws to allow concealed carry. The mainstream media and my neighbors are so isolated here in New York City and in Washington, D.C., most of us had no clue that carrying a concealed weapon is already legal in the rest of the country. More places all the time, legal guns, and yet crime does keep dropping."

Stossel concluded the show by recounting Britain’s failed experiment with gun bans, and revealed that Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, known for advocating gun control, had declined an invitation to appear on the show to argue his case as the FBN host took a self-deprecating jab at the New York Senator:

Another day, another liberal meme.

Yesterday I tackled how Newsweek's Howard Fineman was attacking Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul for picking a fight that the liberal media, in fact, was whipping up.

Today, it's Fineman colleague Ben Adler and his insistence that conservatives are fixated on smearing both Elena Kagan and softball players everywhere as gay.

Adler made his argument in his May 20 The Gaggle blog post, "What Is With Conservatives, Gays, and Softball" by picking apart a comment Fox Business Network's John Stossel made on Fox News Channel in which he defended Paul's comments regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964.What annoyed Adler most was Stossel's quip that gay softball leagues, for example, should not be forced to admit straight players:

The gay softball team? The proverbial black student association has long been every anti-civil-rights pundit's favorite shibboleth, but why suddenly gay softball team? Do gay people have separate softball teams that don't allow straight people to play for them? If so, it's still an awfully random example. Oh wait, no it isn't, it's a dog whistle to everyone who thinks that women who play softball are gay, and that therefore Solicitor General Elena Kagan is gay. Stay classy, John. 

There are two problems with this. First and foremost, it was gay groups that first made a stink about an innocuous photo by the Wall Street Journal that was clearly selected as a clever tease for a story in the May 11 edition. The headline and caption for the Kagan-playing-softball photo were as follows:

According to actor and comedian Drew Carey, Hollywood is not the intolerant blackballing liberal utopia many deem it to be. In fact, Hollywood is very accepting of the right-wing crowd - except for that fringe, radical segment known as conservatives.

"In Hollywood, you can pretty much get away with being a libertarian," Carey told John Stossel on the Fox Business Network. "But if you're a conservative you're kind of doomed."

Carey was a featured guest on "Stossel" March 18, dissecting the economic calamities surrounding his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio (anointed Forbes' new “Most Miserable City” ), and to provide the perspective of an aspiring businessman.

"Now you're a libertarian right?" Stossel asked. "Has that slowed your career?"

The past several decades, Americans have seen the disaster unionism has wrought on Detroit's Big Three. The auto-makers, saddled with powerful unions, fell victim to a combination of labor inefficiency and premium worker pay that proved unsustainable.

And while much of the rest of the private sector long ago realized the sots, government apparently has not. So, for the first time in history, public employees comprise the largest segment of unions today.

Save for New Jersey or New York, the pending public pension crisis is nowhere more evident than in California. Currently the state is on the hook for $100-300 billion in unfunded pension and health care liabilities with no end in sight - on top of a projected $25 billion budget deficit.

A lot of leading thinkers on the right have warned about this, but now with President Barack Obama no longer enjoying high approval ratings and many of his defenders with their back against the wall, the race card is being deployed as one of the last lines of defense.

And one of the most bizarre and egregious examples of this desperation to defend the President at all costs came from MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann. On his Jan 28 program, he singled out Erick Erickson of RedState.com, John Stossel, host of the Fox Business Channel's "Stossel", Jay Nordlinger of National Review, former Bush speechwriter and Washington Post contributor Marc Thiessen, John Hood, also of National Review and Fox News host Glenn Beck as racist for criticizing the president's demeanor during the Jan. 27 State of the Union address.

"But our winners, these guys, assessing not the speech, but the president himself," Olbermann said. "Erick Erickson, ‘cocky.' John Stossel said he hoped the president would admit he was, quote, ‘arrogant.' Jay Nordlinger, ‘looks arrogant whether he is arrogant or not.' Marc Thiessen, ‘defensive, arrogant.' John Hood, ‘flippant and arrogant.' Glenn Beck, ‘like a punk.'"

While countries like China, Brazil and India are on the path to ascendency, the United States appears to be heading in the opposite direction, according to the former CEO of a major U.S. bank.

In a segment on the Jan. 7 broadcast of the Fox Business Channel's "Stossel," John Allison, the former CEO of North Carolina-based BB&T Corporation (NYSE:BBT), the 10th largest bank in the United States, warned of dark times ahead if the country continues on its current course.

"Now, it's a long-term trend," Allison said. "We will have some kind of economic recovery and we'll have some economic growth. I think the most likely intermediate scenario is stagflation like the 1970s."

On Thursday’s Stossel show on Fox Business Network, host John Stossel got to do the kind of show he was not able to do earlier this year when he was at ABC, as he devoted an entire show to the debate over access to health care, and gave attention to the market-based plan utilized by most employees of Whole Foods, which uses health savings accounts and encourages employees to shop around for health care, and to conserve their money for use in future years. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who has been the target of attacks from socialized medicine advocates despite the popularity of his company’s program with its employees, was the featured guest on Stossel's show, though he and Stossel at one point did get to debate socialized medicine advocate Russell Mokhiber. When Mokhiber cited the dubious statistic that 45,000 Americans die yearly from lack of health insurance, and contended that "zero Canadians die from lack of health insurance," Mackey charged that in Canada, "They oftentimes die from a lack of health care as they wait for services that are rationed by governmental bureaucrats."

While Stossel argued that too much involvement by a third party like insurance companies or government programs have caused health care prices to increase because consumers shop around less, Stossel and Mackey also charged that government regulations that forbid health insurance companies to compete across state lines, and that require insurance companies to cover procedures in their plans that are not desired by many customers, have helped create the problem of high insurance prices:

Perhaps there is something obstructing the view overlooking Rockefeller Plaza, where MSNBC broadcasts "Countdown" nightly because the show's host, Keith Olbermann fails to see the existence of a news media with a liberal bias.

On MSNBC's Dec. 14 broadcast of "Countdown," Olbermann came to the defense of NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" executive producer and noted left-winger Dick Wolf. The Dec. 9 episode of Wolf's program featured a killer who targeted the children of illegal immigrants and in that episode, one of the characters, played by John Larroquette, blamed conservatives "like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck" for inciting violence against immigrants. That prompted O'Reilly on Dec. 10, the next broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," to fire back at Wolf.

And that led Olbermann to respond to O'Reilly, five days later, which deteriorated into Olbermann making the seemingly laughable assertion there is no such thing as the liberal media. Olbermann began his tirade by attacking Andrew Breitbart, who is launching a Web site called "Big Journalism," which will take on "the Democratic-media complex."

Howard Kurtz must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed Sunday, for his "Reliable Sources" review of John Stossel's new Fox Business Network show was uncharacteristically way off base.

After presenting a cherry-picked video clip of Stossel talking about how he wished Nobel Laureate Al Gore would come on the program to debate man's role in global warming, Kurtz asked guest David Zurawik, "[D]oes this continue a trend of partisan people going to partisan networks and putting them on partisan shows?"

After Zurawik's answer, Kurtz carped, "My only problem with that first program is that he basically had one guest for three-quarters of the show, a guy from the Libertarian Cato Institute who is also very skeptical of global warming. And so, except from the studio audience, you didn't hear a lot of contrary voices."

Unfortunately, Kurtz edited out the segment when Stossel read an e-mail message from Gore's representative saying the former Vice President had to decline the invitation to appear on the program because he was too busy (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Despite appearing on CNN and MSNBC Wednesday, Nobel Laureate Al Gore was apparently too busy to discuss global warming on the premiere episode of John Stossel's new Fox Business Network program.

To kick off his new show Thursday, Stossel chose the controversial subject of climate change, and invited on a number of guests to address the issue in great detail.

According to an e-mail message sent to Stossel's producers on November 23, "the growing influence of the climate crisis message and the demand on Mr. Gore's time" made it impossible for the former Vice President to attend.

Of course, Gore's busy schedule didn't prevent him from being interviewed by CNN and MSNBC on Wednesday, nor did it stop him from appearing on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" just two days before he declined Stossel's invitation.

I guess even an esteemed Nobel Laureate has to understand his limitations (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):  

Prominent libertarian journalist John Stossel's new show is slated to premiere Thursday at 8 PM on the Fox Business Network. Entitled "Stossel", the program will consist of 44 shows exploring topics pertaining to economic liberty.

Thursday's premiere will focus on either Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" or on global warming. Stossel will do the show in front of a live studio audience. Email stosseltix@foxnews.com to secure tickets. The show will broadcast from Fox's studios at 48th Street and 6th Avenue in New York City.

Stossel asks all those who do not get the Fox Business Network on their home televisions to "call your cable company and tell them you won’t pay your bill until they offer FBN!"

On Tuesday's The O'Reilly Factor on FNC, former ABC News anchor John Stossel -- now with Fox Business -- came aboard to discuss the New York Times's recent attack on him for speaking in front of the conservative/libertarian group Americans for Prosperity. After charging that the Times never showed interest in his speeches to conservative groups before he joined Fox Business, the former 20/20 host also relayed that during his early days as a consumer reporter, he received a number of Emmy Awards because "they loved me" for his left-leaning work. But after, in Stossel's words, "I got smarter," turning more pro-business and anti-regulation, the Emmy Awards were no longer forthcoming.

Stossel even recounted an incident in which a person he met on the street expressed a desire that he "die soon" for his conservative views.

After starting the interview by asking Stossel about Web sites that engage in gambling based on election predictions, O'Reilly brought up the Times's newfound interest in the former ABC anchor. Stossel pointed out the double standard: "I make speeches. I make about 25 a year. I've done that for years. And suddenly, now that I'm at Fox, critics are leaping to attack me, according to the New York Times."

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter’s Metro section story on Wednesday, “Newsman to Speak at Events of Group Opposed to Health Care Plan,” tackled the apparent journalistic no-no of John Stossel, the libertarian journalist who recently moved to Fox Business from ABC News. This is not a standard they've enforced at the New York Times.

Stelter suggested that Stossel’s scheduled appearance in front of a conservative group is a rare foray of a journalist into a partisan political event that vindicates the White House’s attacks on Fox News.

John Stossel, the newest star of the Fox Business Network, is also starring this week at a series of events orchestrated by opponents of a Democratic health care overhaul.

On Thursday Mr. Stossel is expected to speak at three forums hosted by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group, in three cities. The group’s Web site says Mr. Stossel and others will “debate solutions and discuss the dangers of government-forced health care” at the forums.

Over the past few weeks, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has had a serious fascination with the grassroots advocacy group Americans For Prosperity (AFP) and how a "news organization" should be defined when it comes to press policy at the Obama White House.

But Maddow, on her Oct. 28 show, was able to merge the two topics in an attack on Fox Business Channel's John Stossel. Stossel recently came from ABC as a host of "20/20" to host a weekly opinion show on the Fox's business channel. But in Maddow's infinite wisdom, Stossel's participation in AFP activities somehow taints him.

"But first, one more thing about health reform and its politics," Maddow said. "Last week, we reported that Fox News contributor and soon-to-be Fox Business Channel [sic] host John Stossel will be headlining protest rallies against health reform staged by Americans for Prosperity, the lobbying group which refuses to disclose donors while rabble-rousing about the dangers of government-forced health care."

Is Fox News Channel president Roger Ailes about to score another big name personality for his fledgling off-spin business channel? According to The New York Times television and digital media reporter Brian Stelter, News Corp's (NASDAQ:NWS) Fox Business Network is considering adding CNN "Lou Dobbs Tonight" host Lou Dobbs to its lineup.

"The business channel is also keen on another administration critic, Lou Dobbs, who met for dinner with Mr. Ailes last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting," Stelter wrote in a piece for the Oct. 12 Times about the growing divide between Fox News and the Obama administration. "The shift for Fox News - the favorite network of the Bush administration, now the least favored one of the Obama administration - has financial implications for the News Corporation, especially given the network's status as a growth engine in a perilous time for media companies."

TVNewser is reporting that "20/20" co-anchor John Stossel is leaving ABC News to join the Fox Business Network:

TVNewser has learned Stossel will host a weekly, one-hour program for the 2-year-old business channel. He's expected to signed a multi-year deal with Fox which will include regular appearances on Fox News Channel during daytime and primetime. He'll also host four, hour-long specials on Fox News, much like the business/consumer specials he'd hosted for years on ABC.

Stossel, a libertarian, has been appearing on Fox News for years as a guest on shows including "The O'Reilly Factor," "Hannity & Colmes" and "The Big Story."

On Friday’s 20/20 on ABC, co-anchor John Stossel exposed the flaws in the Canadian and British government-run health care systems, and even showed viewers a clip of President Obama as he once expressed a belief that single-payer health care would be an acceptable system, even while taking the position that he would not pursue it, during one of the Democratic party presidential debates in 2008. During the January 21, 2008, debate on CNN, Obama said:

It's fine for us to have a debate about how the best way to get there is, but to suggest somehow that I'm not interested in having everybody covered, or to suggest, as Hillary just did, that I was in favor of single payer, I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single payer. What I said was that if I were starting from scratch, if we didn't have a system in which employers had typically provided health care, I would probably go with a single-payer system.

During the six-minute, 20-second segment -- which can be seen here -- Stossel informed viewers of the long waits patients must endure in countries with government-run health systems – like Canada and Britain. He recounted that some patients – including world leaders and wealthy celebrities – come to America for treatment of serious conditions, and relayed the case of one Canadian woman who came to America to treat a clogged artery whose American doctor told her she would not have survived waiting a few more weeks for Canada's government health care. Additionally, Stossel found that even patients waiting in emergency rooms in Canada have to wait an average of 23 hours for service.

On the Thursday, July 16, Glenn Beck Program on FNC, magician Penn Jillette and ABC’s 20/20 anchor John Stossel – both self-described libertarians – appeared as guests to talk about health care reform. Stossel used the time to preview his upcoming segment on the problems with socialized medicine in Canada, which will air on a future episode of 20/20. Stossel informed viewers of Canada's shortage of doctors: "What stuck most with me was the town that had a lottery. So many people are waiting to get a family doctor, they can't get one. Once a month, the town clerk pulls names out of a box and he calls the lucky winners – congratulations, now you can have a family doctor." FNC later played a clip from the upcoming segment in which the 20/20 anchor talks about a privately run veterinary hospital in Canada which provides medical care for animals much more quickly than humans can receive similar care from the government-run system.

After Jillette, who co-hosts the show, Penn and Teller: B.S., on Showtime, argued that too much health insurance reduces price competition and leads to higher prices, Stossel complained that the plans promoted by politicians, by increasing the amount of insurance, would make matters worse: "As Penn said, is if you had grocery insurance, you wouldn't care, and the grocery store, and the incentives that creates to spend more are just insane. And that's the problem with health care, and yet, the politicians say the solutions are always more insurance."

Jillette soon complained that too much socialized medicine already exists in America – in the form of Medicaid and Medicare – and touted individual choice:

John Stossel on Monday blogged about the fact that ABC bumped a planned segment of his that is skeptical towards universal health care, saying, "Yes, I am sick of the coverage of Michael Jackson. I hate it that ABC didn’t run my piece." According to TV Newser, the report, which would have aired on the June 26 edition of 20/20, has now been rescheduled for the July 17 edition of the show.

The five minute segment will look at the problems that countries such as Canada and Britain have faced with government-run health care. In an online version of the story, Stossel (see file photo above), Andrew Sullivan and Andrew Kirell wrote, "In England, shortages of dentists have caused hundreds of people to wait in line just for an appointment. The queues can be so long that some people have resorted to pulling out their own rotting teeth, using vodka and pliers as tools."

Got this e-mail earlier this afternoon, which pretty much says it all about ABC's news priorities:

The links in the e-mail are after the jump.

Media types often have a habit of masking their true beliefs in their online blogs in attempt to maintain the fiction that they are "unbiased." One such blog that comes to mind is the Daily Nightly blog of Brian Williams in which he attempts (not always successfully) to hide his liberal bias to an extent that it comes off as quite inane. In fact, your humble correspondent has labeled the Williams blog as the Daily Dully.

In stark contrast to the Williams ennui is the new John Stossel blog of ABC News,  John Stossel's Take, which began less than two weeks ago. And in that short time, Stossel has already made waves with his amazingly candid views which frequently run counter to the liberal conventional wisdom. An example is Stossel's blog edition posted last Friday titled, Arrogance:

As I read about the President’s new econ regulatory plans, I marvel at the arrogance.  I doubt whether any president, with all his advisers and cabinet officials, is capable of overseeing something as complex as the financial system of a great economy.

ABC's token contrarian John Stossel appeared on Friday's "Good Morning America" to promote his new "20/20" special on some very politically incorrect subjects. In the process, he got into a bit of a dust-up with GMA news anchor Chris Cuomo, telling the son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, "And I know in law school and in your political family, you believe good things only happen because government passes laws." [Audio available here]

Stossel appeared on the morning show to discuss one of the topics on his special, airing Friday night at 10pm on ABC. Among other subjects, he will argue that it was wrong for the government to make it illegal for employers to fire a woman because she is pregnant. After showing a clip of the piece, Cuomo skeptically questioned, "...This law was created for a reason, that women were discriminated against. That's why they passed the law in the '60s." Cuomo, whose brother is currently the Democratic Attorney General of New York, challenged, "Why open the door to giving a corporation a way out?"

Now for something completely different, or at least something pretty rare on network TV. ABC’s John Stossel has paired up with Drew Carey and the libertarian Reason TV for tonight’s 20/20 special headlined “Bailouts and Bull,” on the limits and unintended consequences of government involvement in the economy and in our lives.

While Stossel is known for his skepticism of big government solutions, most journalists at the big networks have been accepting of the premises of President Obama’s interventionist approach, not challenging his assertions the way President Bush’s economic policies were frequently challenged.

Stossel will tackle the idea that all economists support Obama’s government-spending-as-stimulus policies, liberal claims that the American Dream is now out of reach for most workers, and the idea that a fence along the Mexican border will really stem the tide of illegal immigrants.

Friday's 20/20 aired a piece on liberal columnist Arianna Huffington in which ABC host John Stossel got to challenge Huffington's views on issues like welfare, OSHA regulations, and the "lunatic fringe" of the Republican party. When Stossel took her to task for living in a $7 million home that is "burning more carbon than 100 people in the Third World" even while she is part of the "war on global warming," Huffington responded: "There is no question that the fact that I'm living in a big house, I occasionally travel on private planes, all those things are a contradiction. I'm not setting myself up as some paragon who only goes around on a bicycle and lives by candlelight." (Transcript follows)

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."

As NewsBusters reported, ABC's John Stossel bravely presented a skeptical view of manmade global warming on the October 19 installment of "20/20."

As a follow-up, Stossel published an op-ed at Townhall Tuesday that should be must-reading for alarmist media members and policy makers around the country.

Marvelously titled "Don't Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet," the article summarized much of what Stossel presented weeks prior on "20/20," while challenging the closed-minded to allow for greater scientific discussion and debate before hasty and capricious policy decisions are enacted that will harm the economy as they do nothing to solve the so-called problem (emphasis added throughout):