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Prime-time propagandistIs ABC's John Stossel a reporter or a right-wing apparatchik?

BY DAVID MASTIO

With Ted Koppel and Peter Jennings, ABC News can boast twin towers of journalistic integrity in an increasingly tabloid TV news environment. Then there's John Stossel. Sure, he's conservative, opinionated and contrarian. But the edge his sometimes unorthodox opinions give his segments on "20/20" and his ABC News one-hour specials certainly is a positive contribution against the daily fluff.

So, it's unfortunate that while ABC News has been looking the other way, Stossel has been transformed from a right-leaning bomb-thrower of prime-time news into a full-fledged propagandist in the classroom. The transformation was fostered by an affiliation among ABC News, Stossel and the conservative Palmer R. Chitester Fund, which sells educational materials based on Stossel's ABC reporting. The arrangement touches on the fundamental ethical question of whether or not journalists and the news organizations they work for should align themselves with ideologically driven organizations.

To untangle the snarl of conflicts Stossel has created would take a graduate level journalism seminar, but here are the Cliffs Notes:

"Stossel in the Classroom" is a series of study aids that includes Stossel's popular ABC News special reports, accompanied by study guides written by two conservative economics instructors at George Mason University. The study guides are emblazoned with a big blue ABC News logo and Stossel's face. ABC News and Stossel had almost nothing to do with the development of "Stossel in the Classroom," but the product is deceptively packaged to look like an ABC product.

According to the Chitester Fund Web site, the program is sold to more than 200 public and private schools across the country, who pay about $300 for the series. "Stossel in the Classroom" is advertised in School Reform News, a publication of the conservative Heartland Institute.

One contributor to the "Stossel in the Classroom" series is the John M. Olin Foundation, an organization that popped up regularly in stories detailing Hillary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy" during the investigation and impeachment of President Clinton. For three decades, the Olin Foundation has funded many of the most influential institutions and individuals on the right. Board member and conservative columnist Walter Williams' professorship at George Mason University is also underwritten by Olin.

Chitester Fund is a conservative foundation, sporting John Fund of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Williams among others on its boards. Text on the Chitester Fund Web site describes the organization's mission: "We are particularly interested in illuminating the prerequisites of a free society — (with an) emphasis on projects that examine the role of government and explain the interrelationship of economic, personal and political freedom," code for a closeted conservative group.

Though Stossel's special reports for ABC News are conservative, they're also good journalism. He doesn't pull any punches against Republican sacred cows from big business lobbyists to B-2 bombers. But "Stossel in the Classroom" crosses the line between edgy journalism and pure propaganda.

The study guide section on robber barons, for example, (based on Stossel's "Greed" special) doesn't mention the word monopoly. In a "case study" on John D. Rockefeller, the word does pop up, but only to argue that oil tycoon Rockefeller wasn't a monopolist. But at least Stossel takes the time to explain that, often, monopolies come to be not because of market failure, but because of government favors for business.

Another guide (accompanying Stossel's "Scaring Ourselves to Death") snidely attacks the government for changing dietary recommendations to emphasize fruits and vegetables over meat and dairy products. Ironically, most of the critics of the health scares Stossel debunks in his special are big believers in ju st those health recommendations. People like Bruce Ames, an internationally reknowned scientist and vocal critic of the Environmental Protection Agency believe that lower fat,

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higher fruit and vegetable diets fight cancer and other health problems, just like the government does. Here's the last sentence of that guide: "Will headline hysteria and federal regulatory agencies continue to divorce public policy from reality?"

Many, if not most, of the 35 to 40 footnotes accompanying each guide cite predictably conservative sources like the Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Young Americas Foundation and the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages. They're not exactly the sources a skeptical reader would find convincing.

Chitester board member and George Mason University professor Williams is also a major on-air presence in two of the three Stossel specials sold by the organization, but he is only identified as an economist. Incidentally, Williams supervises the work of Thomas Rustici and Alan Koczela, the economics instructors who wrote the classroom materials for "Stossel in the Classroom" at George Mason. Rustici's George Mason bio describes his participation in the Chitester project like this:"He is the editor and coauthor of a series of free market books for high school students that will accompany a video series by John Stossel of ABC."

The connections among Chitester, Stossel and ABC News and the level of cooperation involved in the project have been considerable. Stossel is a financial contributor to Chitester (he's even been known to donate his hefty lecture fees to the organization) and a vice president at ABC News admits that he helped edit one of the study guides. Chitester is also the registered owner of the stossel.org, johnstossel.com and johnstossel.org domain names on the Internet, (johnstossel.org is unused, stossel.org links to the Chitester site andjohnstossel.com gives you the choice of moving on to ABC, the Chitester Fund or the Web site of another charity Stossel is involved with.) ABC News gets a cut on all sales of Chitester's sales of the series, but neither organization will say how big it is.

Given a week and dozens of phone calls and e-mails, Stossel wouldn't explain himself and the study guide authors at George Mason University were "unavailable."

Williams, however, defends the project. "The study guides just elaborate on some of the economic principles in Stossel's shows in as truthful a fashion as possible," he argued, also stating that they weren't propagandistic. But when presented with specific examples from the text he admitted there were problems. For instance, where the authors write, "Another common myth asserts that a nation's wealth depends on labor unions. Unions do not create wealth." Williams concedes, "That might be misleading language." Williams is right - anyone who has ever covered unions knows that their premise is that they redistribute wealth from the owners and managers of companies to the workers, not that the union "creates" wealth.

And Williams sees no problem with serving both as a source for Stossel and a promoter of his work. Further, Williams argues that just because an ABC News logo appears on the cover of study guides written by the GMU economics instructors, nobody would assume that ABC News had anything to do with the content - even though the authors' names don't appear until the inside cover at the back of the book.

Richard Wald, senior vice president of editorial quality at ABC News, originally signed off on the deal. Wald readily admitted that he had read only one of the three study guides. He said he was unaware of the Chitester Funds' conservative economic agenda, that Stossel gave them money and that Williams was on the fund's board.

When asked about the fact that the authors' names don’t appear until the end of the book, Wald finally admitted, "Maybe it is a bad idea, maybe we should have drawn a better line."

Bob Chitester, founder and president of the Chitester Fund, believes the matter boils down to a business misunderstanding. "There was some confusion," he says, "our written agreement did not speak to any editorial role for ABC, but now we've adjusted our process."

Chitester is a combative interview subject, starting each answer with "You're a liar!" or "That's not true, you're making it up." Any questions about the ethics of this deal are "just made up," too, he said.

If any of this sounds familiar, it's because the Los Angeles Times found itself in a similar situation last fall when it agreed to share revenues from its Sunday magazine with Staples Center, the subject of a special issue.

Far less money changed hands in the ABC News-Stossel deal, but in some respects, the ABC deal is more ominous. No one alleges that the Los Angeles Times ever allowed Staples Center to control the content that was published under its logo. ABC News did. And unlike the one-time Los Angeles Times-Staples alliance, ABC News' complicated relationship with Chitester Fund is ongoing.

In the end, it may not be ethics that determines the fate of "Stossel in the Classroom." The program has apparently been unpopular with instructors. Chitester said that the student guides are being rewritten in response to negative feedback from the teachers who were using them. "There are some sections where the authors went beyond economics, so they have to change."

As Stossel himself said in an interview a few years ago, "All we have in the news is our reputation. People have a hundred choices for news now." salon.com | Feb. 25, 2000

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Friday-1, February 25, 2000 SALON Daily Clicks: Media Circus Page: 1

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MEDIA CIRCUS

Strange bedfellows: Journalists as corporate shills

FRONTLINEWhy do Americans hate the press?

Maybe it's because so many reporters are in bed with the rich and powerful.

By MARK SCHAPIRO

NEW YORK —

W hen you make your living as an ostensible muckraker, you better be careful where you step - as John Stossel learned to his cost. Last week, the ABC News correspondent found himself stung by the target of his own attempted sting. Stossel, who has lately shifted his undercover operations from consumer reporting to a series of pro-corporate and anti-environmental ABC specials, was lured into a trap — one that he himself might have designed under different circumstances — by his latest target.

Stossel, working on a special he dubbed "Junk Science," had been hoping to debunk the work of Dr. Grace Ziem, who specializes in treating medical ailments resulting from exposure to environmental toxins. Instead, Ziem, tipped off to the Stossel sting, invited two reporters from the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post to a Baltimore hotel, and accused Stossel and two associates of illegally taping her medical consultations with two of Stossel's ABC colleagues. The two associates had visited her complaining of symptoms which she attributed to "chemical sensitivity" — a reaction to the vast cocktail of synthetics used to produce household paints, cleansers and countless other products that can cause health problems in susceptible individuals.

Stossel planned to use the recordings in the latest of a series of reports that the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has characterized as "biased against consumers and environmentalists."Instead, he now faces felony charges resulting from Maryland's requirement that both parties involved must assent to a tape recording.

The tip that clued Dr. Ziem into Stossel's bungled sting came, appropriately, when Stossel made a public pitch to coiporate interests, as reported in the feisty Washington, D.C.-based newsletter Corporate Crime Reporter. Two weeks before the sting, one of Ziem's patients had read a report in the newsletter about an appearance Stossel made in early September before the Federalist Society, a group of conservative lawyers. According to the Reporter, at the meeting Stossel talked up his upcoming projects — on "junk science," "freeloaders" and "the permanent government," all favorite conservative fodder — and made a pitch for corporate sponsors: "I certainly would encourage any of you who knows somebody who buys advertising on television to say 'please buy a couple of ads on those Stossel specials.1"

"A pitch for sponsors is generally not what an investigative reporter does," observes Jeff Cohen, director of FAIR. "But Stossel's reputation preceded him into that room — his attacks on environmental, consumer activist, and regulatory agencies got into that room way before he walked in. He's famous for being the reporter who 'champions the overdog."' According to FAIR, two producers on Stossel's specials quit because, they say, he refused to accept information counter to his thesis about government regulation.

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The Stossel case reveals how reporters seemingly in search of "the truth" all too often are compromised by financial and personal connections with the very people and organizations they are covering. Such ethical problems are explored in tonight's Frontline special, "Why Americans Hate the Press," on which I worked as a reporter.

Stossel's humiliating counter-sting occurred too late to make it into tonight's show. But if it had, we might have pointed to the $11,000 speaking fee that he received two years ago from the American Industrial Health Council — a group that includes such companies as Du Pont, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble and Squibb, all of which have a vested interest in many of Stossel's assaults on government regulation.

And Stossel is not alone. Many of the most famous members of the D.C. press corps — the true power elite of American journalism - accept high-paying corporate speaking engagements and have direct personal ties to the political candidates. The top echelon of Washington political reporters — Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, George Will, Andrea Mitchell and many others whose heads appear daily on the screen — receive from $10-$30,000 (in Cokie's case) per appearance from industry groups like the National Association of Realtors, the American Hospital Association, the Public Relations Society of America and the Mortgage Bankers Association. The sensitivity of this issue was demonstrated last November, when ABC's Cokie Roberts, informed that her paid appearance in front of the Public Relations Society of America might include audience questions about her speaking fee, withdrew at the last minute (she was replaced by NBC's Andrea Mitchell).

Over the last 18 months, all three networks, in an effort to combat what ABC News Vice President Richard Wald termed "the appearance of conflict of interest," have imposed guidelines that prohibit their correspondents from taking speaking fees from profit-making enterprises or groups representing those they may report on.

But the real compromises lie deeper — in corporate sponsorship that defines the very parameters of what is considered acceptable discourse. Take the pundit talk shows, where a parade of center-to-right-wing talking heads appear each week to engage in what passes as political debate. From "This Week with David Brinkley" to "The McLaughlin Group," two corporate sponsors predominate: General Electric and Archer Daniels Midland, two of the biggest corporate recipients of subsidies, tax breaks and government contracts in the country.

Is it really a surprise, given this fact, that these shows are more like political circuses than political debates? That histrionic posturing, featuring heat-filled disputations of political minutiae, fills the vacuum where genuine ideological discussion might otherwise exist? That television rarely challenges the abuses of corporate power? And that such progressive populists as Jim Hightower and Ralph Nader have routinely failed in their efforts to obtain backing for a political television show with a truly left-wing perspective?

Stossel is feeling the heat right now for his allegedly biased reporting, but there's a whole new career field waiting for him. Perhaps he should consider punditry.

Mark Schapiro is a frequent contributor to Salon.

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