John Stossel was born in Chicago 68 years ago today. In his life, he has gone from liberal consumer reporter to libertarian hero, along the way shifting the dialogue from the ways in which government must protect us, to the ways in which we must be protected from government.
After graduating from Princeton in 1969, Stossel had little desire to go to graduate school and instead decided to go into the business of reporting. Working his way up the ranks while battling a stuttering problem, Stossel eventually got his break when he landed a gig with ABC News in 1981 as a consumer reporter for Good Morning, America and a correspondent for 20/20. During his time with ABC, Stossel won 19 Emmy Awards while advocating for more stringent consumer protections.
However, Stossel began to challenge his own thinking when he discovered Reason magazine. He realized how much governments, as well-intentioned as they may be, actually made life more difficult for American citizens. His move toward libertarianism coincided with a larger role on 20/20, as he began doing weekly “Give Me a Break” segments, often detailing the ways in which government failed. In 1994, the segment became so popular that it was spun off into a weekly one-hour segment.
Stossel became co-anchor of 20/20 in 2003 and published his first book, Gimme a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media in 2004. Stossel moved to Fox News in 2009, where he currently resides. He often appears on The O’Reilly Factor, as well as hosting his own one-hour show entitled Stossel.
John Stossel has been a major catalyst in the modern libertarian movement. Milton Friedman said of Stossel, “Stossel is that rare creature, a TV commentator who understands economics, in all its subtlety.” For all of the years that Stossel spent propagating liberal myths, he has more than made up for it by presenting the concepts of liberty in a manner which anyone can understand.
Stossel brings a certain credibility to the libertarian movement. He is a name and face that has earned trust throughout the American populace, and a man that can articulate and synthesize the most complicated ideas into simple, one-hour specials. It’s difficult for a libertarian today to attempt to persuade a friend with the writings of F.A. Hayek or Murray Rothbard. What is much easier is to bring up a short YouTube clip of the Stossel show deriding big government in a succinct and clear fashion.
Libertarians can have a hard time communicating their complex, principled positions in this 24-hour news cycle. For that reason, “conservative” and “liberal” pundits are easily able to distort messages in a manner which fits to their narratives. It is much more nuanced to explain why liberty nearly always succeeds where coercion and government forces fail.
All of us in the libertarian movement have different people and sources which we can point to as the reasons we came to liberty. Whether it was Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in 2008 or a simple distaste with the ever-increasing size of government under both major parties, not many began as libertarians, but nonetheless, we have all ended up in the same pool of Americans who are fed up with big government.
Like many others, I owe much of my evolution toward liberty to John Stossel. Growing up in a conservative area, it was simple to watch Fox News and parrot the Republican narrative. But every time I heard Stossel speak about liberty and challenge the status quo, my interest was piqued in a manner that made me want to hear more.
Today, as I find myself with a more solid and principled stance as a libertarian, I cannot help but be thankful to John Stossel for assisting in opening my eyes.
