Stossel Interview Footage Pulled
Back to the Government-Media Complex Page
Here is another case where the enviro-nazis within the network staff worked against legitimate news investigation. John Stossel produces some of the finest research on regular tv on all kinds of subjects. His subjects, as far as I know, have never been objected to or edited on the basis on asking "leading questions". I find it remarkable that the 7 women who objected were all members of the "group" mentioned and that was all it took to maim his work. Don't miss his response below.
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 27, 2001; Page C05ABC News yesterday yanked footage of correspondent John Stossel's interviews with schoolchildren about global warming after their parents complained that they had been misled.
While ABC maintains that the interviews were handled responsibly, spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said, "we decided we would respect the parents' wishes" by killing that part of the environmental special airing Friday at 10 p.m.
Seven Los Angeles parents, working with the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, revoked their permission for the interviews in a letter to ABC Monday. They said they had not been told of the involvement by Stossel, who frequently challenges environmental claims as overblown, and that they believe Stossel asked the children leading questions to support his views.
Stossel may interview other children because "they've got a hole in their show now," Schneider said, and may explain on the air what happened with the disputed interviews.
Questioning the parents' turnaround, Schneider wondered "how people who had no complaints discovered they had complaints after they had been contacted by activists."
But Mike Casey of the Environmental Working Group produced an e-mail showing that a friend of one of the parents, concerned about Stossel's "confrontational" approach, got in touch with the organization. "Did we help the parents? Absolutely," Casey said. "Are the parents' concerns genuine? They most certainly are. . . . No amount of spin from ABC can change that."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
Stossel Says His Critics 'Brainwashed' Parents
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page C01ABC's John Stossel hit back at his detractors yesterday, accusing environmental activists of having "brainwashed" a group of California parents into insisting that the network pull his interview with their grade-school children.
Responding to his critics at the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, Stossel said on Fox News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor":
"I call them the totalitarian left. They want to silence people who criticize them."
Ken Cook, the group's president, dismissed Stossel's comments as "preposterous," saying: "If anyone's trying to limit debate it's John Stossel, by suggesting commie lefties are behind this as some sort of plot. . . . He's a bully and he's finally been challenged."
The heated words followed ABC News's decision to yank the footage of Stossel interviewing 10 children about environmental issues after the parents, who had contacted Cook's group, withdrew their consent. The parents say they were never told that Stossel was involved in the program, which airs Friday, and that he pushed the students to give the kind of responses he wanted.
Stossel said he is "not happy" about ABC's decision to withdraw the footage but that "I see their point. These are children. . . . If parents don't want their kids on, who are we to force them?"
But Stossel contended that the parents had been "thrilled" and changed their mind only after "environmental educators talked to them. I don't blame them for being scared after what these people probably said about me. . . . People said, 'He's going to distort. He lies. In the past, he's faked things.' They make up stories about me and the parents get scared."
Responded Cook: "He does make things up. He made up a whole set of pesticide results last year and we caught him." After that program aired, Stossel apologized for citing tests on organic produce that, it turned out, were never conducted.
One of the parents, Michael Scott, whose 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son were interviewed, said on the Fox show that "at no time were we informed that Mr. Stossel would be involved or . . . that this particular piece would have a slant. . . . I don't see why Mr. Stossel and ABC need to manipulate my children."
In a letter to Stossel yesterday, Scott asked "that you and your spokespeople stop stating or implying that the Environmental Working Group somehow goaded or manipulated us to voice our concerns."
Stossel is a one-time consumer reporter turned free-market advocate who has long criticized government regulation.
In a 1994 speech to the American Industrial Health Council, he said agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency "make life less safe . . . because they interfere with the market," and he called for the FDA to be abolished.
On the footage that ABC has withdrawn, the children say yes when Stossel asks whether they thought America is more polluted and the air and water dirtier than they used to be -- which, as Stossel noted, is untrue.
Stossel then says on the tape: "What sad distortions to feed children."
In the O'Reilly interview, Stossel accused the school system of brainwashing students and, in another swipe at environmentalists, assailed "the extremists who dominate the debate." Environmental activists, said Stossel, "shouldn't be scaring people the way they are."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company