ABC & John Stossel Rev Up
Anti-Environmental Rhetoric
by Pat Fish
VegSource Guest Letter
Note: Views and opinions in guest letters and editorials do not necessarily reflect those of VegSource.com

When: 10PM EST Friday, June 29th, 2001
Where: ABC

John Stossel doesn't like those deep-green ecology types. And he's got a network backing him up to show the public exactly why they're so wrong.

No, it's not Fox News as many might expect. It's Stossel's longtime employer ABC that's airing the hour-long "Tampering With Nature" special. And a controversial show it is.

At least that's what hundreds of media outlets are saying.

Despite Stossel supposedly being unwilling to make the talk show circuit to explain why children-interviews were excised and clarify certain "non-facts" that he implies the Environmental Working Group is spreading about him, he has still managed to show up on virtually every news outlet. AOL-CNN's Jeff Greenfield had him on, and Stossel had a regular lovefest with Bill O'Reilly on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. O'Reilly interviewed a parent who did not want his child to be part of a show that attempts to ridicule the ecology movement's concerns based upon a child's simple perspective on the environment. ABC pulled the interviews... and managed to turn that change into a great vehicle for pimping Stossel's "Tampering With Nature".

Remember when there used to be a rule in journalism that said, in effect, "the news should never be about yourself"?

The basic tone of "Tampering With Nature" is to say that green-leaning people are either bad or stupid because man's exploitation of the Earth has meant some really good things for humanity. And Stossel has a bit of a point. We are tool-building primates who got where we are by manipulating our environment. Then again, we've also screwed up a lot of things.

But this prime-time crusade is meant, in part, to drive ecology and humane education out of schools... that is, as long as it's the "totalitarian left's" viewpoint that's being driven out. While Stossel goes to extremes to find a minority of "experts" who differ with mainstream science and picks extreme situations to paint ecologists in an unflattering light, he fails to highlight the excessive influence that agribusiness, fast food companies, hunters, lumber suppliers and mineral companies have in the schools. Even USA Today concedes this point: http://www.ewg.org/pub/home/reports/tamperingwithtruth/drinkard.html  Worse yet, the government has specific agencies and programs which use tax-dollars to get across industry's point of view to the captive audiences in schools. It's hard to know why Stossel doesn't see these subsidized PR programs as meriting attention.

Stossel insists that despite the self-induced media uproar, that the program is perfectly fair and accurate.

This isn't the first time Stossel has mislead millions of viewers. There was that terrible mess over his organic food report http://www.vegsource.com/articles/stossel_update.htm and the results of a food test that had never been conducted.

It also seems that the dairy industry has now "educated" Stossel on the "benefits" of genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone.

In the piece, Stossel also claims that all of America's trash could be served by a 11 square mile landfill. Even if that were so, whose backyard would it go into? And what about the energy used to ship all that waste? And how long would it really last?

The basic problem with Stossel's approach is his reliance on individuals with ties to the very industries that benefit from environmental extraction and degradation.

The credibility gap is widened by the shameless self-promotion ABC and Stossel have been conducting through the other media outlets.

At this rate, you can bet that Stossel will be picked up by Fox News as soon as his ABC contract expires.

Copyright Pat Fish 2001

Stossel's email: johnstossel@abcnews.com 

ABC has provided a corporate-controlled venue where Stossel and viewers can interact: http://boards.go.com/cgi/abcnews/request.dll?LIST&room=stossel 

You can see an example of Stossel's political POV by looking at his bookmarks here: http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/stossel_weblinks.html 

Perhaps the most colorful of Stossel's bookmarks is the one for heartland.org.

Stossel has a mailing list of sorts, which you can sign up for here: http://abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/stossel_login.html 

Unwilling to give out Stossel's email address, ABC has provided this reply page:

http://abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/stossel_suggestions__mailform.html 

Stossel's snail-mail:
Mr. John Stossel
Correspondent
ABC News
47 West 66th Street
New York, NY 10023
johnstossel@abcnews.com  

For more info see:
http://www.ewg.org/pub/home/reports/tamperingwithtruth/

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