John Stossel says that he, like every other reporter, has political beliefs. Only he
admits it:
When I announced last week that I was leaving ABC for Fox, some readers complained about my "bias." I replied: "Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine."
Look at today's burning issue: President Obama's pledge to redesign 15 percent of the economy. Virtually every reporter calls his health care plan "reform." But dictionaries define reform as "improvement." So before they present any evidence, reporters pronounce Obama's plan an improvement. Isn't that bias?
The New York Times took its bias to an absurd length. Its page-one story on the big anti-big-government rally in Washington, D.C., referred to "protests that began with an opposition to health care. ..."
Apparently, in the Times reporter's and editors' view, opponents of the Obama health care plan oppose health care itself. (The online article was later changed.) [...]
I admit that my guiding political and economic philosophy—libertarianism—now shapes my reporting, in this way: It prompts me to ask questions that others don't ask.
I don't claim to be the expert. But some of my colleagues who write about business know nothing about economics. Many are comically hostile to profit—they dismiss it as "greed" (although they bargain for the highest salaries possible). [...]
I'm surprised that the self-described enemies of intolerance can't tolerate even one MSM reporter who doesn't share their statist premises. The interventionist state has been the status quo for generations, so I must be something other than "conservative." "Liberal" is what my philosophy used to be called. It's the statists who are the reactionaries.
