Last night John Stossel gave the keynote address, “Freedom and Its Enemies.” Stossel is a unique figure. He has won numerous honors for his investigative reporting, including 19 Emmy Awards. After years as a reporter Stossel’s political views began to shift. He became less and less convinced that big government and heavy regulation were the answer to the problems he was uncovering. As he abandoned the liberal, anti-business rhetoric he became more and more unpopular and stopped winning Emmy’s. Today he is one of the most visible proponents of free market economics in mass media.
It’s hard to summarize Stossel’s address without notes because he covered so much ground. He gave a clear primer in free market thought and then combined that with his experience in investigative reporting. Stossel also talked about how news decisions are made at the major networks. Producers want novel and visual stories. (Often trial lawyers bring sob stories to consumer reporters hoping to generate lawsuits.)
Stossel emphasized that overreporting dangers that hurt very few people has allowed more important dangers to go unnoticed. He pointed out that bikes (kill 800 a year), swimming pools (kill 530), and bathtubs (kill 320) would never be approved in today’s regulatory climate. He applied similar logic to disasters. For example, when a plane crashes there are immediately dozens of reporters broadcasting live from the scene “telling us that we still don’t know anything, but we’ll tell you as soon as we get word.” Thus, some families cancel their flights plans and drive to their vacation destination even though it is a much riskier way to travel (43,354 deaths a year to 570).
Stossel’s free market emphasis was a great match for TFAS, but he alienated a segment of his fairly conservative audience by adding a social libertarian element.