Stossel is a journalist for ABC News (in)famous for making documentaries that challenge the media's leftist slant, bringing up interesting facts in the process.

For this, radical leftists like FAIR's despise him.

Stossel is very open about how he has been giving his opinions, especially back when the Left still loved him for championing its side rather than disagreeing with it.

FAIR states, "Stossel himself does not claim to be balanced: In an ABCNews.com on-line chat (1/29/01), Stossel responded to viewer questions with comments like 'I clearly do have a point of view' and 'I also admit my report was one-sided.' Taking Stossel at his word, it sounds like his ABC News reports should be labeled as commentaries."

What FAIR evades is that Stossel's reports have already been labeled commentaries. That's why the announcer at the beginning of every "20/20" episode featuring Stossel's "Give Me a Break" segment called it "Stossel's column" throughout much of 2000.

FAIR adds, "If he is allowed to openly and consistently advocate for [sic] his laissez-faire point of view, ABC should also provide comparable airtime to a critic of laissez-faire policies," ignoring the whole slew of anti-market reporters already on ABC's staff, particularly on Peter Jennings' "World News Tonight," which FAIR predictably regards as too pro-capitalist. This also ignores Barbara Walters' petty on-air criticisms of Stossel's news stories right after they're shown.

One attack from FAIR that was particularly pathetic -- even for this group -- was in its criticism of Stossel's 1999 documentary "Is America # One?" In its press release condemning the program, FAIR says that one of the experts interviewed, Dinesh "D'Souza[,] is identified as an 'author and research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.' But viewers are not told that D'Souza is neither an economist nor a writer who has ever specialized in economics."

This remark implies that Stossel falsely presented D'Souza as a professional economist. I have seen all three of this show's broadcasts and D'Souza is presented as exactly what he is -- an "author and research scholar" who does write about affairs pertaining to economics, such as in his book "Virtue of Prosperity," recommended by "Forbes" magazine.

(Regrettably, D'Souza incorrectly credits Adam-Smith-styled utilitarianism as being the moral basis of capitalism, rather than its true justifications, which are individual rights and the ethics of rational self-interest.)

And, as Stossel's staff points out, "Many interviewees on the show commented on economics-related matters, ... [like] former steel worker George O'Neil, without any implication that they were economists. Furthermore, D'Souza's views were shared and supplemented by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, who also appeared in the hour."

This argument of FAIR's was a mere arbitrary assertion. Its usual tactic, however, is to cite facts out of context in order to mislead.

In denouncing 2001's "John Stossel Goes to Washington," FAIR blares, "Stossel's method is simple: ... demonstrate how privatized, market-based solutions are more efficient. Glaringly absent from Stossel's report is any mention of one of the biggest regulation-related stories of the year -- California's deregulation-induced energy crisis."

FAIR, like the rest of the leftist media it considers too pro-free-market, fallaciously attribute the power crisis to "deregulation." But it was deregulation in name only. What really happened was that a new set of regulations were written and then misnomered it "deregulation." As Californian former civil engineer David Holcberg stated, this wasn't actually deregulation, but "re-regulation."

Such "re-regulation" included the state government's imposing price ceilings on the electricity retailers, even as the electricity wholesalers raised the prices they charged the retailers, forcing the retailers to sell at a loss, while the state critically restricted the energy supply by preventing the construction of new power plants for a decade. That is the problem's root -- not the free market's introduction, but its continued absence.

FAIR asserts, "Citizens who live in California towns with publicly owned utilities have been largely unaffected by the rolling blackouts and soaring rates that have crippled the rest of the state." That's only because California's Public Utility Commission didn't impose the same restrictions on the state-owned electricity providers as it did the privately owned ones.

Story continues at: http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?8246aa5d-39ba-421e-a6b8-94ca24efa6b2

Stuart K. Hayashi is the president of the Reason Club of Honolulu and an undergraduate in Entrepreneurial Studies at Hawaii Pacific University, though his opinions do not necessarily reflect that of either institution. He can be reached at radical_individualist@hotmail.com and an index of his past editorials for HawaiiReporter.com can be seen at http://reason_club.tripod.com/stuart_editorials.html (If you would like to continue seeing Stuart Hayashi's editorials on this site, please let Hawaii Reporter know at info@hawaiireporter.com)

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