"We Have a Lot of Work to Do"

ABC's John Stossel on defending the market from within the liberal media and his upcoming collaboration with Reason.tv

February 4, 2009

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This move toward more spending makes me think not. On the other hand, as [Cato Institute Executive Vice President] David Boaz often points out, if you are gay or black or a woman, we forget how America has changed, how much more freedom there is. It's a mixed bag.

Government's much bigger, but in many personal ways we are freer. The fall of the Soviet Union in some ways is a danger because we used to have role models of failure. Now you have the left saying, "Ah, we just have to do it right, be more a middle way between government and capitalism, like Europe." We have models of failure in Cuba and North Korea and the post office and the motor vehicles department, but they are relatively few. People still say, "When I'm scared, government must step in."

Reason: What are some of the things you regret about your career?

Stossel: Now that I've wised up to the benefits of economic freedom, I regret much of my first 20 years of bashing business, of calling for more regulation. That's the intuitive reaction. You send the TV out to 15 repair shops. Some people cheat you. Politicians call me up and say, "Oh, great piece, we're going to establish a department of consumer affairs and license TV repair shops and car repair shops." If you haven't read reason, it sounds good, because you like licensing. We license dogs and drivers. It sounds like the right thing to do.

I encouraged that sort of thing for many years. Just scare stories: "Danger in the Grass," things about lawn chemicals that were over the top.

Reason: I was worried about exploding coffee pots during my whole childhood because of you.

Stossel: I did a story on somebody who died because their house caught fire after their coffee pot blew up. These things do happen, but it's a big country. There's a lot of nasty stuff happening to people. You've got 50 people who die every year from plastic bags.

Reason: What about the flip side, the things that you look back on and you're truly proud of what you've done?

Stossel: My first special was this show called Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death? That's when I finally said, "We're scaring people about everything. We ought to put this into perspective." I read Searching for Safety by [political scientist] Aaron Wildavsky, which really opened my brain. I tried to put risks in perspective. It was tough to get on the air. Two freelance producers quit rather than work on that show. They said I wasn't objective, that it was conservative dogma to say that regulation itself might hurt people. To ABC's credit, a producer said we don't agree with you, but this is an argument that deserves to be heard.

More recently, we did a special called Stupid in America, which was about education. I worried that the show wouldn't be well received because education isn't good TV. It's just people, kids sitting at a desk. But the ratings-we get minute-by-minute ratings now-went straight up. It was the highest-watched show that night, as was the repeat. It argued pretty forcefully that choice and competition might make a big difference. There's this argument that the reason public education is failing is that we're not spending enough money. We're spending $11,000 per student. If you do the math, that's more than $200,000 per classroom. Think what you would do with that money.

Reason: Drive the kids up in limos?

Stossel: Hire four excellent teachers. It just shows that government monopolies waste money. That special stirred the pot some. I'm happy with that show.

Reason: If you look at the positions you've taken over the years, there's a lot for conservatives to dislike about you and a lot for liberals to love. You've spoken out against corporate welfare, against greedy peddlers of junk science and medicine ripping people off, in favor of legalizing drugs, gay rights, and free speech. Yet it seems almost always that you're widely adored by conservatives and widely scorned by liberals. Why is that?

Stossel: I'm not sure, but you're absolutely right. Somebody came up to me in New York and said, "Are you John Stossel?...I hope you die soon." He was a legal aid lawyer. There is this real hatred on the left because I'm a consumer reporter defending business, and they just so hate business.

I don't know. I mean, I'm pro-choice. I was against the war in Iraq. I think homosexuality is just fine. I want drugs legal and prostitution legal. Yet conservatives invite me to their conferences and give me standing ovations. Sometimes. Not always, but they generally like what I have to say. I even mention some of that, and it shows how pathetic it is for conservatives in the mainstream media that I, a libertarian, am the closest thing that they have to invite to a conference.

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