Stossel: I can give you some summaries. There have been some very good, some very nasty. One said I was sucking up to the Republicans, so I could eat giraffe tartar at Newt's house. That was Tom Shales in The Washington Post.
Reason: What reactions to the specials have you found most gratifying?
Stossel: The first [special] was the most difficult and interesting. It's a good example of the market working, in that I had been talking to ABC about a risk program for several years. They had basically stared at me blankly, said they would get to it, but never did. Rupert Murdoch offered me a job, and to keep me ABC gave me four specials a year. I insisted the first one be "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?" Some executives argued that I shouldn't make that my first one because no one would watch, [that I should] do something on diet, body image, or raising children, which we know the audience likes. But I insisted on doing "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?"
In the course of doing the hour, two freelance producers quit, saying this was not journalism. It was OK to say that regulatory money was being misspent, that less should be spent on Superfund, perhaps, but more must be spent on self-extinguishing cigarettes or fire-proof furniture. To simply say that regulation itself might be damaging to health and the economy was something no respectable journalist should be allowed to do. There was a meeting at ABC. I laid out what I wanted to do, and they laid out what they thought should be done. ABC's news management, to their credit, said, "Well, I don't agree with you about all of this, but it's a valid intellectual argument, and you deserve to have this on." So those two producers quit, and the program, to a lot of people's surprise, was, I think, the number 15 program for that week. We got a thousand or more letters, 99 percent positive -- people saying, "Thank God, somebody's finally saying these things."
Reason: Is that a lot of letters for this kind of show?
Stossel: That's a lot of letters. And I think it got the record number of requests for videotapes ABC has received for a news program, with the exception of one news special on Pearl Harbor.
Reason: What reactions to that special or other specials have you found upsetting, disappointing, or irritating?
Stossel: Sometimes it's disappointing how little impact a program seems to have. I fought so hard to get my risk analysis chart on "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?," which I believe helps the public understand relative risk. It's one thing to say smoking is much more likely to hurt you than flying in an airplane, or pesticide residues, or living in Love Canal. It's another thing to see the huge disparity and to see the damage that poverty causes. I hoped that these bar graphs would be picked up by other media and used as a foundation for debating risk intelligently. And of course, none of that has happened.
The other funny thing is that, in the midst of "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?," there was an alarmist ad for an upcoming news program, on pharmacists mixing things up badly and injuring their customers. All these are stories that deserve to be done, but the issue is how breathlessly we do them.
Reason: Do you think people would be more receptive to you if you seemed to be basically like them -- a liberal, but with idiosyncratic views on certain topics?
Stossel: It's an interesting question. Gregg Easterbrook was vilified for the book he wrote [A Moment on the Earth], which was quite middle-of-the-road, I thought. There is a sense that he stepped off the curb, he betrayed his community. I think there is the same sense about me. I was a consumer reporter for 20 years, and to now criticize the consumer movement on regulation -- I have betrayed my religion.
Reason: When someone like Sidney Wolfe calls you "a menace" and says you're "doing a massive amount of damage," how do you feel? Annoyed? Amused? Proud?
Stossel: I'm developing thicker skin. When I first read these things, it was awful. I crashed; I wanted everyone to love me. And when I was a consumer reporter, everyone did. I wasn't used to criticism. That [1994 Washington Post story quoting Wolfe] was one of the first major articles. I think it's a great example of how the press works. After I did "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?," I was promoting it on some talk radio program, and someone called and said, "Watch out for Howard Kurtz. He's the enforcer for the liberal interest groups." And months after the broadcast, the same day I received a phone call from a liberal interest group wanting to write a newsletter [article] about my heresy, the call came from Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post. I think Kurtz is a pretty fair writer, in that he makes an effort to talk to a lot of people and get the story right. But in the story with the quotes from Ralph Nader and Sidney Wolfe and others -- [even though] this program had 20 million viewers, most of whom thought it was a good thing -- he could only find critics to quote.
Reason: What does it signify to you when Ralph Nader says you are "the most dishonest journalist I've ever encountered," that you "used to be on the cutting edge," but now you've "gotten lazy and dishonest"?
Stossel: It's hard to speculate on what other people are thinking. I assume Ralph was upset that I, a consumer reporter, would criticize him. In the course of the interview [for "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?"], I asked him about many of the things he says we should worry about. And he gave endless, detailed answers about hot dogs, coffee, flying, and carpets, which we in TV cut down to their essence. I guess he felt that was unfair. I suspect, in terms of him calling me names, it's the tendency of these groups to demonize people who criticize them.
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