John Stossel looking for a break

There is a prob­lem with writ­ers who learned to craft the lan­guage for a tele­vi­sion audi­ence. The writ­ing some­times reads as a sur­face gloss. Stos­sel’s book, while inter­est­ing, nev­er delves deeply enough to sup­port his asser­tions. He may be a fine inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist, and the sit­u­a­tions he describes as wrong tru­ly appear wrong, but in this book he does­n’t go beyond assert­ing his opin­ion as fact.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly frus­trat­ing is his ten­den­cy to only cite the sta­tis­tics he con­tra­dicts. He tells us about a study released that reporters took to mean one thing, tells us about the stats and num­bers quot­ed, then switch­es to his con­ver­sa­tion­al tone to say, «actu­al­ly, the oppo­site was true» and con­tin­ue to describe a new con­text for the sta­tis­tics. It sounds good, and it might be a nec­es­sary expe­di­ent for TV jour­nal­ism where air­time is lim­it­ed and words are backed up with images, but on paper it reads as though he’s hid­ing the facts behind asser­tions and anec­do­tal evidence.

The book starts off fright­en­ing­ly self-indul­gent. I won’t pre­tend to solve the debate around jour­nal­is­tic objec­tiv­i­ty and I don’t believe that any jour­nal­ist must refer to her­self in the third per­son (eg «this reporter watched the troops open fire»). Some­times I believe it’s appro­pri­ate to iden­ti­fy one’s self as the source of infor­ma­tion, and if a jour­nal­ist is real­ly doing his job he should some­times be the only one who saw an event or piece of evi­dence. There is, how­ev­er, a line which, once crossed, leaves a jour­nal­ist firm­ly in the indul­gent self-aggran­dize­ment zone.

Unlike Sarah Vow­ell’s first-per­son inves­ti­ga­tion, Stos­sel has a spe­cif­ic the­sis he’s try­ing to prove. With Vow­ell, we get to fol­low her as she explores the play­ground of his­to­ry. Stos­sel gets in the way of his own facts.

I’ll give Stos­sel props for this: while he adheres to the Lib­er­tar­i­an par­ty line that free mar­kets need no reg­u­la­tion, he does acknowl­edge that there are non-mar­ket­place inter­ests and fac­tors that require some form of enforce­ment. He prefers the UL and Con­sumer Reports styles of self-reg­u­la­tion to FDA-style reg­u­la­tion and state licens­es, but does not pre­tend that prob­lems with sec­ondary effects invis­i­ble to the con­sumer can be addressed vol­un­tar­i­ly. He specif­i­cal­ly lists pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment next to enforce­ment of laws against vio­lent crime as items tasked to the government.

Sim­i­lar­ly, when writ­ing of the prob­lem of friv­o­lous asbestos law­suits, he makes clear that he is not deny­ing that many of these suits have been valid. «**No one dis­putes that asbestos can kill.**» he writes (bold­ing his), «Those sick peo­ple deserve com­pen­sa­tion, and boss­es who knew of the risk but allowed work­ers to be exposed any­way deserve to be pun­ished. That’s what the tort sys­tem is sup­posed to do.» So it is clear that he’s not inter­est­ed in let­ting neg­li­gent employ­ers off the hook or hang­ing those injured by that neg­li­gence out to dry. He’s only inter­est­ed in putting a stop to friv­o­lous suits.

Stos­sel is very clear about these extremes, yet not so clear about what should hap­pen in the range clos­er to the cen­ter of the spec­trum. More depth would go a long way.

One bit I relate to is about being a lib­er­al «brand­ed» as a con­ser­v­a­tive for not toe­ing the par­ty line. I find it amus­ing to live in San Fran­cis­co where I am about as far to the right wing as you’ll find, while I also live in Amer­i­ca, where I am about as far to the left as you’ll find. Friends and rel­a­tives out­side the Bay Area are aghast that I vot­ed for Gavin New­som for may­or, because he’s so rad­i­cal. Inside San Fran­cis­co, my friends are all aghast that I vot­ed for such a cor­po­rate stooge friend of the estab­lish­ment as Gavin New­som. It’s kind of fun being the con­ser­v­a­tive wacko, espe­cial­ly when I’m still way left of center.

Here’s what Stos­sel says:

> I’m hard­ly what I would call con­ser­v­a­tive. I hap­pen to think con­sent­ing adults should be able to do just about any­thing they want. I think pros­ti­tu­tion should be per­mit­ted. (If quar­ter­backs and box­ers make mon­ey with their bod­ies, why can’t a woman make mon­ey with hers?) I believe homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is per­fect­ly nat­ur­al, that the drug war should be end­ed, that flag burn­ing and foul lan­guage should be tol­er­at­ed, and most abor­tion should be legal. This is con­ser­v­a­tive? Real con­ser­v­a­tives should be insulted.

Yeah, sing it brother!

And on fur­ther reflec­tion, I’m glad to see this kind of Lib­er­tar­i­an thought explored even in a glossed over and over­sim­pli­fied way. It did­n’t do much for me, but I think I’d glad­ly rec­om­mend it to some­one who expressed some inter­est in learn­ing about this per­spec­tive on free­dom. It is refresh­ing to hear from some­one not pulling to the right or the left but pulling by a set of prin­ci­ples that may bor­row from both sides and else­where. Amer­i­ca needs more of this sort of thing.