Stossel: I would have preferred to have called "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?" just "Scaring Ourselves to Death." I don't know if it began as my style or a way of being slightly less opinionated in presenting these issues, but clearly Dick Wald [senior vice president in charge of ABC's Standards and Practices] prefers it as a question mark.
Reason: Have you been told by producers or other people at the network to tone down your scripts or your articles?
Stossel: When I started at ABC, often the lawyer who vets each piece would say, "You can't say that as a statement, but you can ask it as a question."
Reason: Was the lawyer vetting your material for libel or for compliance with ABC's policy on strong opinions?
Stossel: That's a mushy line. Supposedly for libel -- that's what their job starts as -- but no one knows what a lawyer will define as libel, so their mandate is broad.
Reason: So a lawyer would say, "You really have to qualify this," or, "Make it into a question"?
Stossel: He would say, "You can't say that." You say, "What if I say it this way, that way, how 'bout if I make it a question?" "OK, you can do that."
Reason: Does that happen much anymore?
Stossel: Now, I just make it a question.
Reason: You've been criticized for crossing the line into advocacy. In your view, have you blazed a new trail in TV journalism, or is it just a matter of using the same techniques from a different perspective?
Stossel: I think two things are happening. One is that I have always avoided professional news-speak. Maybe I have been successful in television because I was never a very good literature student. I didn't go to journalism school. I learned out of fear of failure. I had to figure out how to write for television. And I learned to write conversationally. Then, as a consumer reporter, I would clearly come down on one side of an issue: This product is better than that product. This company is ripping people off -- it's a bad thing. As I ventured into more political areas, I continued that style of speaking plainly, saying, "I'm a human being who's investigated this. Here's what I think." And people who disagree with what I think now say I shouldn't be doing it.
Reason: What about the idea that reporters should be objective? Is that a reasonable goal? Would the public be better served if reporters dropped the pretense, if they said, "Here are my biases, and here is my story," rather than pretending to be objective?
Stossel: I wouldn't go as far as you do there, because we're all trying to be objective, but we all have points of view, and we'd probably do better acknowledging that. People who think that every time someone dies there must be a new government agency to prevent the next death ought to acknowledge that they have a bias in that direction. But they are not aware that they have that bias -- they just think they are being compassionate.
There are all shades of gray here. My most opinionated work falls between an op-ed piece and a news article. When I get too opinionated, they make me superimpose the word commentary over what I am saying.
Reason: When does that happen?
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