I've always found John Stossel to be very one sided, especially when it comes to covering the economic aspects of stories. In the "Scaring Ourselves" story, he claimed that all economists agree that ALL REGULATIONS lead to lost jobs and the imposition of higher costs on society. This clearly is not the case. For example, everyone deciding to stop at red lights is a regulation that leads to greater productivity in the economy. He always presents a simplistic neo-conservative view in which the market is supposed to solve all of society's problems. This was especially evident in his story on the fate of the pension plan in the U.S. He stated something to the effect that only 15% of Americans believe that they will recieve any benefits when they retire, and then he contrasted this with a figure showing that more Americans believe in flying saucers. Just because people do not believe that they will not receive any benefits does not in fact imply that they won't actually receive government payments. He contrasted the American public plan with the privitized Chilean plan; as proof that privitization is better he asked a few Chileans on the street how they felt about their privitized plan. He did not cite any polls. He did not mention how mutual fund companies are aggressively lobbying governments worldwide to privitize their pension plans. In most of his stories, he sets up some special interest group as the villain (lawyers, old people, Ralph Nader ...) and then he claims that if we only let the market do its job, everything would be right again. Daljit Dhadwal Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC
