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Reason Interviews John Stossel
Monday, February 16th, 2009Also, be sure to set your DVR for March 13, when John Stossel will do a special for ABC News called “Bullshit in America.” The special will be based on six videos from Reason.tv.
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On the subject of bailout mania, even kids are catching the bug:
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11713621
(I just like the headline.)
My man-love of Stossel continues …
I’m surprised this wasn’t Stossel’s “most regretted” memory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-k2uJ3AmVE
I record 20/20 on the DVR every Friday. And then delete them without watching them if there aren’t any segments by Stossel.
But, it surprises me that they keep him on. His perspective, while pleasing us, probably pisses off the majority of their traditional viewers. I keep thinking that ABC must not be paying attention and it’s only a matter of time before they dump him.
I never thought when I was a kid that I would grow up to be part of the despised lunatic fringe, whose safety lies not in their vast numbers, but in the fact that there are so few of them that no one considers them a threat.
Of course, it’s not us who are the lunatics…
*sigh*
For some reason at a bit more than 6 minutes into it (right when Stossel says, “we older people”) the video quits.
Obviously it’s not doing that to everybody, but boy is it annoying to at least one person. :-/
Further proof that John Stossel is the man.
Eh, the last couple of his segments I caught didn’t interest me, and I found some of his points very debatable to say the least, but to each their own.
I’ve only ever seen one other person who completely agrees with me on everything and he lives right above my bathroom sink. :)
But, I know of very few people associated with national TV networks who take a libertarian position as often as he does.
I dont know what is happening with Stossel, but I havent agreed with most of what he has said for the last several years of 20/20. All of the sudden he has been acting like a corporate schill.
I’m with chance on this one. I don’t know why Stossel has become such a libertarian hero in the media. Sure, libertarians will be more than sympathetic to most if not all of Stossel’s views, but Stossel fails miserably in the journalism he claims to produce.
He constantly skews studies and opinions, misrepresents his ideological foes, and sets up his pieces to where his “interviews” only represent his opinion.
It’s more entertainment than journalism.
And this leaves plenty of ammo for lefties to knock him down. FAIR and MediaMatters, while I don’t agree with all of their criticisms, have done a pretty decent job raising skepticism to what Stossel reports.
Most annoying, is that his reports are almost by design elementary. As though he wants to appeal to the school kids he claims are so stupid. He’s manipulative and condescending.
This “scourge of the liberal media” used prices of ice cream to compare to gas prices – “thirty times as much”, yes Mr. Stossel, because I buy twenty gallons of ice cream every week; this “scourge of the liberal media” falsely claimed pesticides were higher in organic food by incorrectly using a study and then later had to apologize for it; this “scourge of the liberal media” consistently cuts and pastes sound bites and video clips using them out of context, making it child play for his critics to lambaste him.
Mr. Stossel… Mr. “scourge of the liberal media”… I don’t think they’re scared of you.
Cheers.
I dont know what is happening with Stossel, but I havent agreed with most of what he has said for the last several years of 20/20. All of the sudden he has been acting like a corporate schill.
Not sure why you’re reading this blog, then, given that Stossel and I agree on nearly everything.
Also, exactly how does opposing the various bailouts, opposing corporate welfare, and opposing subsidies to huge agribusinesses make him a “corporate shill?”
Well, he’s a shill because he doesnt believe in Uncle Sam and Auntie Samantha solving all of what ails us. Duh. ;)
I’ve always thought Stossel was a corporate apologist and shill, not to mention that he’s a global warming denier. It’s disappointing to hear you say you agree with him on “nearly everything” – I read this blog because I respect your BS detector and want to hear more about the underreported stories of our war on drugs. That you have any faith in John Stossel makes me think your BS detector is on the fritz.
The bipolar fallacy rears its ugly head again, the notion that expressing opposition to A must mean alliance with the perceived enemies of A. The common example is if I criticize one politician, then I must be supporting the politicians in the other party. Of course that is pure illogic, but people fall for it all the time. In this case, the perception is that corporations are the enemies of government. It’s pure myth, but people still believe it because it is such a common media theme. So, by the flawed reasoning of the bipolar fallacy, when someone points out the flaws in government, then he must be pro-corporate. Just silliness.
Saying that government regulation seldom solves the problems it was intended to and often results in new (possibly worse) ones doesn’t make Stossel a corporate shill. As Radley notes, Stossel is against all sorts of corporate welfare. And, Stossel never says that businesses are self-sacrificing saints. He is very clear that they do what they do out of self-interest. But, that generally means that they make their money by providing people with products and services that they are willing to pay for. Stossel never says that a business that commits fraud or sells a faulty product shouldn’t be legally accountable. But he does point out that most regulations, like licensing and government inspections and so on tend to cause as many problems as they solve, and often raise the prices for consumers without providing any real benefit.
And, the government regulations that Stossel opposes are actually a benefit for big corporations, because they have the means to comply with the regs whereas their smaller competitors do not. Many government regulations are just barriers to market entry and the big players are more than happy to deal with them if it means (and it does) that they won’t face as much competition because a small company can’t afford to have a whole compliance department that deals with government rules and paperwork.
Additionally, even in that Reason clip, Stossel was very adamantly against the corporate bailout both the Republicans and Democrats have been pushing recently. And, he notes that he is in favor of all the variety of media (on cable, the internet, etc.) that is available today, even though that has broken the big three corporate networks’ (including his employer’s) control of television news. How is that corporate shill?
I don’t agree with the interviewer’s characterization of libertarianism as “economic conservatism and social liberalism”. While it’s true that many libertarians match that description, it’s more accurate to describe libertarians as being conservative on government, but laissez-faire on economics and social issues.
My personal life and social mores couldn’t be described as anything except “conservative”, but I absolutely oppose government efforts to Stepfordize the world and turn everyone into happy cheery monogamous heterosexual married Christian families.
John Stossel’s special is “Bullshit in America”? It sounds like an autobiography.
“Not sure why you’re reading this blog, then, given that Stossel and I agree on nearly everything.”
I agree with him on nearly everything too. But that doesn’t mean that I think he’s always an honest or evenhanded advocate of what I believe. Measured as an opinion writer, he’s decent, though his editorial voice is sort of cloying. But measured as a journalist, he’s downright deceptive and manipulative to a degree no one should accept as good journalism.
“So, by the flawed reasoning of the bipolar fallacy, when someone points out the flaws in government, then he must be pro-corporate.”
Look. I point out the flaws in government all the time, and I’m not arguing that we all move out to a commune. I’m a fiscal conservative with a undergraduate degree in economics. I changed my voter registration so I could vote for Ron Paul…
I don’t think John Stossel is a corporate shill because he’s against the efficacy of government spending; I think John Stossel’s a corporate shill because he skews the facts to promote a corporate apologist agenda under the guise of principled libertarianism. And, to me, he oozes smug self-righteousness. I just don’t like the guy the way some people don’t like car salesmen out of central casting.
Therefore, I don’t want this guy to be the public face of libertarian beliefs, anymore than I would want Rod Blagoiavich to be my defense attorney. He makes my BS sensor go haywire – I just don’t find him credible.