It's funny how left-leaning people are just good journalists, but if someone has a right-leaning or libertarian take on things, they're "propagandists." I'll take Stossel's reasoned reports over the lies by omission and misrepresentations that I see in the so-called mainstream media any day.

-- Scott Frost

Mastio's article on ABC News correspondent John Stossel, while it makes a few sundry points worth noting, is simply a fishing expedition that looks in every nook and cranny in an attempt to debunk the work of a rare commodity: a journalist with an independent streak. Stossel's alleged misdeeds are a small price to pay. He consistently breaks new ground or takes a fresh angle on broken ground, pointing out the dreadfully obvious follies and abuses of big government that mainstream media folks, in their torrid love affair with the almighty state, simply refuse to fully acknowledge.

Stossel, like other contrarians, represents a new breed of journalist that is immensely threatening to the pampered Pollyannas who inhabit most newsrooms these days and make it a daily mission to play the race card even when racism's not an issue, and who actually believe conservative thinking is more dangerous than leftist ideologies, which themselves are a proven menace to a truly free society. Stossel perhaps needs to be mindful of his duties. We all do. But, as a conservative writer myself, I enjoy seeing the mainstream media's reaction when they're confronted with a journalistic gadfly.

-- Mark Anderson

John Stossel, a right-wing puppet? Am I the only one who watched his subtle, brilliantly subversive ABC special on the underground pot-growing industry back in the spring of '98? The one in which he sympathetically interviews many Mom & Pop home-growers as well as organized Humboldt careerists, and then asks the camera what the big deal is? I could hardly believe he got the piece past the ABC censors; I sat and watched it, dumbfounded and delighted at his daring. He all but called for an end to the War on Drugs. If there are other right-wingers who share his beliefs, I sure haven't heard them piping up.

-- Melissa Lanning

In the article on John Stossel, the writer says, "Though Stossel's special reports for ABC News are conservative, they're also good journalism."

Not everyone would agree with this statement. In fact, the organization Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting regularly exposes the inaccuracies and sloppy reporting committed by Stossel.

-- J.W. Flenner

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