Veteran ABC newsman John Stossel won 19 Emmys exposing scammers and con artists and came to a chilling conclusion – the biggest threat to our well-being is often our own government.The "20/20" co-anchor made a dramatic about-face when he realized that "less government is good government." He abandoned his liberal perspective, became a libertarian – and paid a heavy price, he recently told NewsMax in an exclusive interview.
When Stossel changed his political stripes, suddenly the awards stopped coming, once-friendly producers shunned him and the liberal establishment struck back with a vengeance. But now he's coming out swinging harder than ever at "monster government." His eye-opening new book, "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity," has recently been released has become a New York Times bestseller.
As a young reporter crusading on behalf of consumers, Stossel says he embraced the liberal mantra that "people should be pretty free to live their own lives but that wise government should tax people to make their lives better – and it should especially tax rich people to make poor people's lives better. That would end poverty and do all kinds of wonderful things."
The deeper Stossel dug into these complex issues, however, the more he saw that the regulators and bureaucrats who were supposed to solve problems were often at their very root.
"I had an unusual ringside seat on the regulatory state as a television consumer reporter," he explained. "I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse," Stossel confesses.
"Top-down central planning is never as effective as free individuals making their own choices, because free individuals will adapt to reality every second, but the central planners can adapt only when they get together to vote."
Stossel, a Princeton graduate, credits his own reporting and reading for his enlightenment, but says no single incident turned on the light.
"It was really a slow epiphany," he admits. One factor "was watching The New York Times endlessly prescribe solutions and then watching them fail."
The mainstream media did not take kindly to Stossel's political conversion, which occurred about 20 years ago.
"They like me less," he says with his familiar deadpan humor, adding, "Once I started applying the same skepticism to government, I stopped winning awards."
He remembers how one news show ambushed him.
"The CNN program ‘Reliable Sources' had me on after I did my first special [in 1994], ‘Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?' When I got there, I found that they had titled the program, ‘Objectivity in Journalism – Does John Stossel Practice Either?'"
Stossel's political awakening triggered mixed reactions from his ABC colleagues – including "bewilderment and lack of interest. I had to fight hard to get certain stories on the air."
But others approached his transformation with an open mind. "Hugh Downs was supportive," he reveals. "Barbara Walters was better than most of my colleagues. When a correspondent said in a meeting, ‘We've got to have a law to stop that,' Barbara said, ‘Well, we can't have laws for everything.' So instinctively she gets some of these ideas. She is very smart."
Stossel encountered most of his opposition behind the scenes.
"The on-air people are not really in a position to stop me or encourage me. It's producers who do that." And almost all of the producers have a liberal bent, he reveals. "Some were hostile. A few were curious."
And most, he says, were skeptical of his ideas.
"After the airing of my first special, two freelance producers quit, saying, ‘This isn't journalism – it's dogma!'" That led to a meeting with Paul Friedman, the executive in charge at the time. Stossel recalls Friedman saying, "Well, I don't agree with you, but it is an interesting intellectual argument that deserves to be made." Stossel says, "I give ABC News credit for that."
Like a political Robinson Crusoe, Stossel inhabits his own island of intellectual thought. Rather than trying to please any one political camp, he assails the weak points on all sides of the spectrum. And he has a lot to say about the initiatives of President Bush.
"What the Republicans in the administration have done is to increase spending more than ever. And I don't pretend to be a foreign policy expert, but I am very skeptical of nation building. I also think the drug war is a huge mistake."
Stossel cherishes personal freedom – but some feel he goes to extremes. "I don't think religion should be a part of government, and I think you ought to be able to burn a flag," he says. "I think homosexuality is not unnatural and not something that should be legislated against."
The outspoken journalist says conservatives impress him with their willingness to still invite him to conferences. "But the liberals just say, ‘He's icky,' and don't want to have anything to do with me," he says.
"Liberals have been so dominant in the mainstream media that they have grown fat, lazy and intolerant. Conservatives are happy to have someone in the mainstream media who will at least consider their ideas," the newsman adds.
Stossel reduces many sacred cows to hamburger meat. His new book is a powerful broadside fired across the bow of liberal thought and is bound to draw as much return fire as his previous book, "Give Me a Break."
Confronting the notion that drug companies are evil price gougers, he explains that the higher the price of medicines, the more good medicines we get.
While unions rail against the outsourcing of jobs, Stossel insists, "Outsourcing creates American jobs." The take-no-prisoners journalist has enraged teachers by declaring that part of the problem with our schools is that they are run by "a union-dominated monopoly." Five hundred teachers recently demonstrated outside of ABC in New York City and challenged him to teach for a week.
Stossel revealed to NewsMax he will take them up on the challenge. (For more, see his accompanying column.)
In his new book, the 59-year-old reporter cleverly marshals experts, statistics and fascinating anecdotes to make his points in a lively and entertaining manner.
To drive home how well-intended government regulation can boomerang, Stossel focuses on the pesticide DDT. Once widely used, it gained the reputation of being a "killer chemical," partly because of what he sees as media hysteria.
The real problem, he says, was that DDT was used indiscriminately and far too much was sprayed. But because of its demonization, DDT is rarely used anymore to fight malaria – despite its effectiveness and safety when used in tiny amounts.
And that's outrageous, he writes, because "malaria will kill more than 1,000 children before you finish reading this book."
With so many misconceptions and poor policies afflicting America, what are the first actions that a President Stossel would take?
"I would pass the Stossel Rule – for every new law they pass, they have to repeal two old ones. I would get rid of farm subsidies and the Education Department. That's a start," he says.
While the controversial newsman clearly recognizes the need for government, he defines its proper role as "limited."
"It should keep the peace and protect the environment within reason, run the courts, ensure a common defense and create a safety net, which competes with private charity, but doesn't exclude it. Otherwise," he says, "it should butt out of our lives."