Cato's Letter (pdf) this quarter contains a fascinating essay by ABC News' John Stossel on the metastasized liberalism of the US media.
You’ve probably seen these books written by people on the left who claim that there is no liberal media. “Look at John Stossel,” they say, “that conservative who gets lots of airtime at ABC.” Where I live—the Upper West Side of Manhattan—people say “conservative” the way they say “child molester.” It’s the worst thing to be called.As they say, read the whole thing. Posted by Kevin Murphy at April 27, 2004 09:09 AM | TrackBack
I find the “conservative” label puzzling, because I don’t think I fit the conservative mold. I think consenting adults ought to be able to do anything that doesn’t hurt other people. I don’t understand why we have a drug war. I think homosexuality is perfectly natural. I think you ought to be allowed to burn a flag if that’s what you think you need to do to make a point. Anything that’s peaceful.
Is that conservative? Real conservatives would be insulted. But that’s what they call me. They call me conservative because I believe in capitalism and free markets. But what’s conservative about free markets? They are chaotic. You never know what’s going to happen next. Yet capitalism is hated in the Upper West Side, and in newsrooms where I have worked.
So what is it about capitalism that brings out all this hatred? There are certainly ugly parts to it, but fundamentally it’s just commerce. We all benefit from that. It is odd that people hate their employers, who pay them, but they love the government, which takes a third of their pay and then wastes it. But they do.
I saw the effect on my colleagues when I embraced freedom and free markets. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist actually asked me, “When did you go over to the dark side?” I guess she didn’t like my answers because she never ran the article. But there was a big change in my career. I started as a consumer reporter, criticizing business. And I got wonderful press. Newsday said, “Stossel’s investigations of the unjust are models.” The Daily News quoted a CBS official who proudly said, “No one has offended more people than John Stossel.” They liked it that I was offending people. When I was criticizing business, I won lots of awards. One year I got so many Emmys that another acceptee thanked me in his speech, saying, “I want to thank John Stossel for not having an entry in this category.”
I don’t win Emmys anymore. It just stopped. And the reason is that I wised up. I realized that the real bad guys were not business. Yes, there are scams like Enron. In a $10 trillion economy, you are going to have some Enrons. But it was the markets, not the government, that figured Enron out, and Enron’s management is not laughing all the way to the bank. Compare that to government scams. When the government messes up, they go to Congress and say: “Sorry, it didn’t work. We need more money.” And Congress gives it to them.