Stossel - Page 2

[Guest guest]

http://www.salon.com/media/feature/2000/02/25/stossel/index1.html

Chitester board member and Mason University professor is also a

major on-air presence in two of the three Stossel specials sold by the

organization, but he is only identified as an economist. Incidentally,

supervises the work of Rustici and Alan Koczela, the economics

instructors who wrote the classroom materials for " Stossel in the Classroom " at

Mason. Rustici's Mason bio describes his participation in the

Chitester project like this: " He is the editor and coauthor of a series of free

market books for high school students that will accompany a video series by

Stossel of ABC. "

The connections among Chitester, Stossel and ABC News and the level of

cooperation involved in the project have been considerable. Stossel is a

financial contributor to Chitester (he's even been known to donate his hefty

lecture fees to the organization) and a vice president at ABC News admits that

he helped edit one of the study guides. Chitester is also the registered owner

of the stossel.org, johnstossel.com and johnstossel.org domain names on the

Internet. (johnstossel.org is unused, stossel.org links to the Chitester site

and johnstossel.com gives you the choice of moving on to ABC, the Chitester Fund

or the Web site of another charity Stossel is involved with.) ABC News gets a

cut on all sales of Chitester's sales of the series, but neither organization

will say how big it is.

Given a week and dozens of phone calls and e-mails, Stossel wouldn't explain

himself and the study guide authors at Mason University were

" unavailable. "

, however, defends the project. " The study guides just elaborate on some

of the economic principles in Stossel's shows in as truthful a fashion as

possible, " he argued, also stating that they weren't propagandistic. But when

presented with specific examples from the text he admitted there were problems.

For instance, where the authors write, " Another common myth asserts that a

nation's wealth depends on labor unions. Unions do not create wealth. "

concedes, " That might be misleading language. " is right -- anyone who

has ever covered unions knows that their premise is that they redistribute

wealth from the owners and managers of companies to the workers, not that the

union " creates " wealth.

And sees no problem with serving both as a source for Stossel and a

promoter of his work. Further, argues that just because an ABC News

logo appears on the cover of study guides written by the GMU economics

instructors, nobody would assume that ABC News had anything to do with the

content -- even though the authors' names don't appear until the inside cover at

the back of the book.

Wald, senior vice president of editorial quality at ABC News, originally

signed off on the deal. Wald readily admitted that he had read only one of the

three study guides. He said he was unaware of the Chitester Funds' conservative

economic agenda, that Stossel gave them money and that was on the

fund's board.

When asked about the fact that the authors' names don't appear until the end of

the book, Wald finally admitted, " Maybe it is a bad idea, maybe we should have

drawn a better line. "

Bob Chitester, founder and president of the Chitester Fund, believes the matter

boils down to a business misunderstanding. " There was some confusion, " he says,

" our written agreement did not speak to any editorial role for ABC, but now

we've adjusted our process. "

Chitester is a combative interview subject, starting each answer with " You're a

liar! " or " That's not true, you're making it up. " Any questions about the ethics

of this deal are " just made up, " too, he said.

If any of this sounds familiar, it's because the Los Angeles Times found itself

in a similar situation last fall when it agreed to share revenues from its

Sunday magazine with Staples Center, the subject of a special issue.

Far less money changed hands in the ABC News-Stossel deal, but in some respects,

the ABC deal is more ominous. No one alleges that the Los Angeles Times ever

allowed Staples Center to control the content that was published under its logo.

ABC News did. And unlike the one-time Los Angeles Times-Staples alliance, ABC

News' complicated relationship with Chitester Fund is ongoing.

In the end, it may not be ethics that determines the fate of " Stossel in the

Classroom. " The program has apparently been unpopular with instructors.

Chitester said that the student guides are being rewritten in response to

negative feedback from the teachers who were using them. " There are some

sections where the authors went beyond economics, so they have to change. "

As Stossel himself said in an interview a few years ago, " All we have in the

news is our reputation. People have a hundred choices for news now. "

salon.com | Feb. 25, 2000

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About the writer

Mastio is a Washington Correspondent for The Detroit News and a

contributing editor to USA TODAY. He also writes for the National Review,

Reason, Policy Review and the Weekly Standard.