Please be warned: there be libertarians below.
Fox New’s tagline—“Fair and Balanced”—is a standing joke, something even sympathizers can admit. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly aren’t afraid to bulldoze guests or ridicule other networks in their self-appointed roles as media watchdogs (bulldogs might be a better word). Now, critics are making an effort to give Fox Business Network’s newest commentator John Stossel the same reputation; in a recent blog post he cited one unhappy viewer as stating that “John Stossel is a paranoid, insane, lying hypocrite.”
That’s a pretty impressive salvo after just a month on the job.
But Stossel seems less concerned with criticizing his critics as Hannity and O’Reilly do than getting to the core of issues. Stossel, which airs Thursdays at 8/7c, does one thing in particular no modern commentator or political personality likes to do: he defines his terms. And it’s making people angry.
In a recent segment, Stossel takes on Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story and other widespread claims that the recent economic meltdown on Wall Street was the fault of today’s favorite political boogeyman:
“When you ask today what caused the recession,” Stossel begins, introducing the episode titled ‘Crony Capitalism,’ “People tend to say—greed, Wall Street, capitalism, evil capitalism. And the bailouts of the car industry and the big banks made people even angrier.”
This, he argues, isn’t what the free market is about—the system we call ‘capitalism’ has a reputation as cold, greedy, and inhuman, where big corporations bleed the little guy with the billions of dollars they get from pocket legislators. It’s the military-industrial complex, the vast right-wing conspiracy, or something.
Refreshingly, John Stossel knows enough not to debate until the terms are clear (that’s literal): words like individual rights, liberty, democracy, fairness, and socialism get thrown about so regularly in political mudslinging contests that they’ve lost almost all meaning. Turn on C-SPAN for a few moments (if you really have nothing better to do) and count how many different definitions of “rights” you get as regarding the current healthcare chaos.
Before he passes judgment (and he does), Stossel makes very clear what definitions he’s operating on. When it comes to ‘capitalism,’ to take the most salient example, it’s the fact that a truly free market doesn’t involve buying elections and getting bailouts.
“Capitalism,” a guest, Russ Roberts of the George Mason University Economics Department, explains, “Is a profit and loss system. The profits encourage risk-taking, the losses encourage prudence.”
The ultimate theme of the episode is that the economy we have today doesn’t follow that pattern at all: it’s government regulation that stifles innovation and government bailouts that encourage irresponsibility.
Whether or not viewers agree, at least they know what he’s talking about when he says ‘capitalism.’
FBN’s new contrarian might be particularly well-suited to the job based on his previous background: a veteran co-anchor of 20/20, Stossel made a name debunking popularly-held beliefs—the ‘mythbuster’ of ABC. Maybe it’s not exactly the scientific method, but operational definitions are a good first step.
And whatever one’s personal political inclinations, there’s no doubt that Stossel fills in the news media a political void that’s been yawning ever wider which each “Tea Party” protest rally, or article Newsweek runs on Ron Paul, or sale of Ayn Rand’s 1,200-page novel Atlas Shrugged. People want to talk about government intervention, and John Stossel was smart enough to recognize that when sales of a 1,000-odd page book published in 1957 are up, it’s time to ride the cultural wave. And he did, with one of his inaugural episodes focused entirely on Ayn Rand’s ideas and her fictional hero, John Galt.
He has a dry sense of humor, a folksy style of speaking, sensational episode topics, and a distracting mustache—but for all that, John Stossel’s new show is relevant and, if not fair and balanced, at least aspiring to objectivity.
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Isabela Morales is a History and American Studies student who rabidly reviews indie science fiction at http://thescattering.wordpress.com/ 
