Talk:John Stossel/Archive 4

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Requested edit protect

I've reverted a portion of the derogatory information, and asked for edit protection.

Although I believe all five of the most contentious paragraphs need to go, I am only removing the two most appropriate at this time that are not covered by WP:3RR. This would only be my third removal of the material in 24 hours, but I don't even want to get close to 3RR. In fact, I shouldn't have to deal with this kind of material even once, much less three times. As per WP:BLP, "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material...about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles" and "the three-revert rule does not apply to its removal." We're not even supposed to be talking bout this, much less edit warring over it. If anyone cannot see why this press release by a partisan organization is a bogus source for impugning the integrity of a living journalist, it seems to be time for administrators to step in.

People are not taking BLP seriously. I have been trying to help as a neutral party who is not interested in the outcome other than to maintain Wikipedia policy standards. However, it appears that there is no middle ground. For me to continue insisting on BLP compliance I would have to get sucked into an edit war on an issue that I have no stake in. I am therefore going to bow out for the moment and let Wikipedia's dispute-related procedures take their course. Wikidemo 14:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The press release that you savage as an alleged "bogus source" makes factual assertions (about what Stossel said and about the real world) and expresses opinions based on that analysis. The distinction is crucial.
For example, you've removed the passage about Stossel's false report concerning Parkinson's Disease and AIDS. The press release doesn't say, "We're FAIR and we're experts on public health, so when we tell you that Stossel is wrong, you should believe us." If that were the pitch, then whether FAIR is a "partisan organization" might be relevant to assessing the weight of the critique (although that fact wouldn't be dispositive; environmental groups and trade associations can reasonably be cited as sources for areas within their expertise, provided that the source is properly identified whenever the point at issue is contentious). What the FAIR press release actually says, though, is that (1) Stossel said Parkinson's Disease kills more people than AIDS; and (2) AIDS is on the CDC's list of top causes of death, and Parkinson's Disease isn't. I see no reason to believe that FAIR would lie about two points that are so easy to check. (Your completely unsubstantiated impugnment of FAIR's integrity is itself arguably a BLP violation, but let that pass for the moment.) Consider all of Stossel's/ABC's resources, plus outfits like the misleadingly named Accuracy in Media that try to depict the corporate media as biased toward the left (!), plus the numerous right-wing columnists who would love to discredit FAIR any way they could. Do you believe that no one would have called out FAIR on this if FAIR were misreporting either Stossel's broadcast or the CDC data? Could FAIR have survived this long as a prominent media watchdog group if it made a practice of lying about what a broadcast actually said or about the contents of published government reports?
It's a completely knee-jerk application of BLP to say, in effect, that FAIR doesn't exist, and to remove such passages without regard to the nature of the reliance being placed on FAIR. For most or all of these items, it's not as if FAIR were claiming to have inside information that's not publicly available. JamesMLane t c 16:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
There is nothing knee jerk about removing defamatory sources about living people. If the words of BLP mean anything it is to eschew this kind of material. The press release may serve its purpose in the world of politics and punditry, but it is indeed bogus as a source of contentious information in Wikipedia about a living person. The headline of the piece is "Stossel's Distortions Finally Catching Up With Him?" and in the very first sentence it accuses him of "fabricated evidence and distorted facts." In other words, lying. The merit of whatever else it may say is beside the point, it is an attack piece. With all due respect, trying to defend a partisan press release that accuses someone of lying as a reliable source is arguing the untenable. You also seem to be arguing that Wikipedia is the place to build a case for who got their facts wrong. That's not the function of a Wikipedia article. We traffic in knowledge, not facts. Wikidemo 17:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Since this is the third time James has brought it up, BLP does not apply to FAIR or MM. They are organizations, not a person. To the rest of his discussion, per NPOV it doesn't matter whether it is true or not or whether it can be proved or not. Sourced statements may not deserve detailed content because of the weight appropriate; in this case, a primary source single organization criticism. "Note that undue weight can be given in several ways, including, but not limited to, depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, and juxtaposition of statements." - WP:WEIGHT. In these cases, I'm willing to compromise and include the references as an example of the type of criticism, rather then remove it all together. Morphh (talk) 17:25, 02 October 2007 (UTC)
Wikidemo, what's knee-jerk is to dismiss everything FAIR says without the slightest regard to what's actually contentious. Whether Stossel is a put-upon victim of leftist ideologues or a shamelessly dishonest corporate shill is contentious. But that's different from something like CDC disease statistics. Do you have the slightest factual basis for asserting or implying that there's anything contentious about FAIR's statement concerning the CDC report?
The headline is irrelevant to that inquiry. You seem to assume that one requirement for being a reliable source under WP:RS is that the source itself comply with WP:NPOV. There is no such requirement. If there were, Stossel's own attack piece on Michael Moore, headlined "Sick Sob Stories", wouldn't qualify, yet Stossel's views are reported in our article about Sicko.
The point isn't whether "Wikipedia is the place to build a case for who got their facts wrong." The point is that, in an article about a professional journalist, a serious accusation of factual inaccuracy deserves to be mentioned (along with any defense that Stossel or some other prominent spokesperson has offered). These are facts that contribute to the reader's knowledge about Stossel.
Morphh, the organizations are run by living persons, and I suspect some of them would take umbrage at the implications for their professional integrity that are being casually tossed around on this page. At any rate, if you look at my prior comments, you'll see that I referred to "militant" interpretations of BLP, not all of which I share, which is why I described Wikidemo's post as "arguably" a violation.
I agree with you that NPOV is a separate issue from whether the point can be demonstrated to be true. To take the disease example again, I'm persuaded that FAIR's accusation is true -- for the reason that the vast right-wing noise machine has apparently said nothing in response to it. I think we're justified in simply reporting what appear to be undisputed facts -- that Stossel said Parkinson's kills more but actually AIDS kills more. Nevertheless, if some people are uneasy with that, I could live with rewording the passage so that it makes FAIR's role explicit. It would be something like: "In a 1999 20/20 report pertaining to the allocation of medical research money, Stossel said that Parkinson's disease kills more people than AIDS. FAIR accused Stossel of inaccuracy, citing the Centers for Disease Control report on causes of death, which listed AIDS ahead of Parkinson's." The reference would be the FAIR press release at [1]. That way, any reader who believes that FAIR would lie about the published report will know how much weight to give the criticism. JamesMLane t c 18:11, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Aside from the content, I find it odd that FAIR seems to make almost same argument as Stossel.[2] However, they make the statement that the Parkinson's Disease death rate is similar to AIDS, not higher. Stossel could have a differnt source for his data that put it slightly ahead.. I don't see why this is significant, controversal, or relevant to the subject's notability. Morphh (talk) 18:54, 02 October 2007 (UTC)
The link you give is to a different FAIR(!), but it is interesting that the other FAIR's allegation that Stossel lied, on the basis that "The most recent (1997) mortality report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists HIV/AIDS as the 14th leading cause of death in America; Parkinson's does not make the list, which includes the top 15 causes." is here (semi-)contradicted by the claim that the "Parkinson's Disease death rate similar to AIDS yet the NIH spends $148 on each patient [vs.] $3,040 on each citizen estimated as having HIV/AIDS". I would take it that Stossel got it wrong, but not far wrong, and may have been relying on obsolete data. We can clarify this and I do not interpret OR as prohibiting us from doing so. It is the nature of Wikipedia that if we do not provide a canonical treatment of this issue it will be reinserted time and time again, mostly in misleading forms. It is therefor both useful and practical to put a NPOV treatment of the subject in the article, once and for all. If the result doesn't look like a paper encyclopedia, sobeit. Andyvphil 21:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Ha - That's funny. OMG - Reading it a bit more they support Stossel. FAIR vs. FAIR .. too funny. "Parkinson's Disease & The FAIR Foundation: In every presentation given by The FAIR Foundation, Parkinson's Disease is highlighted in the powerful ABC/ADA John Stossel Video. It features another hero in the battle for more research funding: Joan Samuelson, J.D., who has persevered against PD to be President of the Parkinson’s Action Network. Please take a few moments to view the video HERE (used with authorization--high speed connection required). Morphh (talk) 21:32, 02 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't know what the death rates are for different diseases, but it is very conceivable that you get different death rates depending on whether you measure deaths directly related to a disease or indirectly related. For example, AIDS greatly weakens your immune system, which is why it is called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Many people who get AIDS actually die directly from another disease such as pneumonia. The same may be true for Parkinson's Disease. Therefore, the numbers you get can depend greatly on how you measure. Your statistics can also vary depending on what population you are measuring. The rates for the U.S. may be different than the rates for the developed world, which are almost certainly different than for the entire world. (AIDS rates probably go way up when you count Africa.) You can also get different rates if you measure people who have the disease. What percentage of people who have AIDS die from AIDS compared to what percentage of people who have Parkinson's die from Parkinson's? Finally, the results can vary depending on what time period you are measuring. As Mark Twain reportedly said, "There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." --JHP 23:11, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The appropriate thing to do is to cover only those criticisms of Stossel that are demonstrably significant as controversies, not those assorted pieces impugning his integrity and competence that strike one as serious allegations if true. I see 2-4 real controversies in the article. Everything else is a mere accusation of error or bias. The final form should be one big paragraph outlining the major controversies, or a short paragraph for each, followed by a one-sentence statement that Stossel has also been accused by media watchdog groups of factual inaccuracies, bias in choosing facts and interviewees, and misrepresenting things that other people have said (or whatever the exact mix is). Accusations can then be sourced for the proposition that they were made and linked to so people can see for themselves, but not cited for the proposition that the criticism is true. If we open ourselves to that, every biography is a potential battleground. I cannot respond to some of the points that seem to be based on things other than actual Wikipedia policy. I'll take your word that you don't mean to accuse me of a BLP violation for claiming that an organization's press release is a bad source.Wikidemo 19:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe someone will suggest we should list something like this:

  • In August 7, 2000, Stossel's distortions finally caught up with him. [3]

SecretaryNotSure 19:26, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Well the ref is used, but that statement is way POV. No way I would insert that. Morphh (talk) 20:08, 06 October 2007 (UTC)

The pesticides issue

I disagree with several aspects of this edit by SecretaryNotSure as it relates to pesticides.

  • Role of EWG: It's misleading to say that EWG "questioned" the pesticide result, and that ABC News "discovered" an error. That implies that EWG merely said, "Hmmm, this seems odd to us, are you sure?" and that ABC News did the heavy lifting. If you check the cited source (this article in The New York Times), you'll see that EWG actually did the investigative work itself. EWG contacted the scientists who'd been commissioned to do the testing. EWG then told ABC News what the latter's own sources actually said. It's therefore a more accurate depiction of EWG's role to say, "The Environmental Working Group discovered that the produce samples had been tested only for bacteria...."
  • How it happened: The current wording asserts as a fact that it was "an oversight". We can certainly report Stossel's explanation. (He says it was "an inaadvertent error"; it would probably be better to use his exact words, although "oversight" is certainly a reasonable paraphrase.) We should not adopt his explanation, though. We have no reliable source establishing, as undisputed fact, that it really was inadvertent, as opposed to deliberate deceptiveness by Stossel. Therefore, his explanation should be reported but attributed to him.
  • What ABC did: The current wording says, "EWG complained the story wasn't corrected in a timely manner." That implies that it was a spat about whether ABC runs the correction now or doesn't get around to it until next week. That wording conceals an undisputed fact that many people consider to be extremely important: ABC didn't merely delay in airing a correction, but rather rebroadcast the false report, uncorrected, even after having been informed of its falsity. The fact of the rebroadcast should certainly be included in this article.
  • Why ABC was so lenient with Stossel: The current wording says, "Stossel was only reprimanded in a letter because Stossel had made efforts to correct the error." I'm not aware of any substantiation for that exculpatory spin. Stossel was forced by ABC to correct the error. What one of the cited sources actually says is, "Mr. Stossel and his producer, the message [from an ABC executive] said, were punished not so much for their mistake, 'but for the arrogance of ignoring complaint letters that followed.'" [4] That article also notes that ABC's leniency toward Stossel (i.e., not firing him) has been criticized.

In sum, I don't agree with the view that a Wikipedia bio article should adopt spin in favor of the subject. JamesMLane t c 17:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

NotSure's edit needs to be reverted, because it gets everything wrong. This is so clear that I hope we can even get NotSure to agree and have the reversion performed during the block. And, BTW, Wikidemo, asking protection immediately after you edit is bad form. Andyvphil 21:33, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
You'll do well to avoid attacking me. I've been completely open and straightforward about what I'm doing here. Wikidemo 22:41, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for falling into the brouhaha. I didn't ask for locking the page or know it was going to be. If I knew my words were going to be enshrined like the placard on the Voyager spaceship, I would have choosen them more carefully. But here's the thinking behind the wording for of the "organic food" kafuffle.

  • The reference at NY Times says:

"The doctors' denials were first brought to light by the Environmental Working Group, which supports the consumption of organic produce. Members talked to the doctors after the report. In a letter to Mr. Stossel, the group asked for an explanation." They "talked to" the doctor; they "asked for" an explanation from ABC News. To me that's sounds like "questioning" because that's what they did, they questioned the doctor and then asked ABC news a question. Yes, I'm trying to avoid the term "discovered" because of it's sinister implications. That makes it sound like they barged into the lab and took samples or dug through the dumpster at ABC and found a memo that said "hey john, here's those fake test results you ask for..."

  • Barring any evidence to the contrary if they say it was a mistake it was a mistake. That's why I said it was an oversight. Because I thought that sounded more encyclopedic than "they finally figured out dumbass didn't do the right tests."
  • Yes, some of those statements were repeated (the entire report wasn't "rebroadcast") even after EWG "notified them" of their doubts, or after "EWG told them." it was wrong. Well, lets be realistic, do they pull reports off the air because someone says it's wrong? Or, do they investigate first, then decide if the report is wrong or not? The later, of course. The EWG is evidently upset that they didn't "listen to them" right away, that would have avoided repeating the error. In other words, EWG says ABC news didn't act fast enough, they took too much time to investigate. That's why I chose the words "in a timely manner." What's the other choice? Should we say "EWG demanded ABC news immediately change any news story once they are notified..." or "ABC failed to immediately remove the error when a guy from EWG called them up and said it was wrong..." or something like that?

Not only that, the 2nd broadcast sounds like it was part of the routine schedule, so it doesn't seem that significant. It seems like it was a case of the investigation going on (and it took too long) and the broadcast schedule going on also.

  • The producer was suspended but not Stossel. The Wendy McElroy article mentions this: "...Stossel escaped suspension himself because he had forwarded mail disputing the segment’s accuracy onto Fitzpatrick for investigation. " And the NY Times article says "Shelley Ross, ... sent an e-mail to her staff members, warning them to take all complaints about their reports seriously. Mr. Stossel and his producer, the message said, were punished not so much for their mistake, but for the arrogance of ignoring complaint letters that followed. Both of those together suggest, (since it was the producer that was punished) that the reason Stossel wasn't suspended was because he did pass on the complaints for investigation, hence the wording that Stossel made efforts to fix the error.

We do know that he was told to issue an apology, I guess. So did ABC news. But we don't know if Stossel would have apologized with or without being told to, so all we can say is they both (ABC news and Stossel) apologized and that they corrected the error.SecretaryNotSure 00:01, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

"The Environmental Working Group questioned that result, and ABC news discovered that through an oversight the produce samples had been tested only for bacteria."
1) It's misleading to say "EWG questioned that result". They questioned the bacteria claims, but they fully debunked the existance of any pesticide result (except on chicken, which results weren't used). And they said Stossel was making up test results and should be fired. Saying they "questioned" whether Stossel was right to say that neither sample had pesticide residue, while technically true,[http://www.ewg.org/node/8105] doesn't capture this.
2)The implication of the sentence is that ABC News responded to EWG's "questioning" and discovered an "oversight" on the part of someone who ordered or performed the tests. No, and no. What they responded to was a NY Times article, not EWG. And there is no reason to believe that not testing the produce samples for pesticides was a "oversight". There was never any intention nor was it necessary to test the produce for pesticides -- the focus was organic fertilization and bacteria. To put it another way, the error was introduced in the scriptwriting, not the testing.
"...some of those statements were repeated (the entire report wasn't 'rebroadcast')...the 2nd broadcast sounds like it was part of the routine schedule, so it doesn't seem that significant. It seems like it was a case of the investigation going on (and it took too long) and the broadcast schedule going on also."
3) The first broadcast was in Feb. 2000, the rebroadcast in July. Dunno why you think the entire report wasn't rebroadcast. It was, and a segment was added where Stossel said he had been questioned about the pesticide claims and claimed he did indeed have the test results to back it up. The investigation by ABC News hadn't gone on too long at that point -- it hadn't begun.
"...Stossel had made efforts to correct the error."
4) Again, misleading. Stossel wrote his producer to confirm that the tests he thought had taken place had actually taken place, and accepted the latter's assurances they had. This is not an "effort to correct an error". You have to acknowledge there is an error before you can attempt to correct it. Andyvphil 13:50, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks.

  • I don't see much of a difference. The EWG "questioned." That's what they did. To say something was "thoroughly debunked" implies something more.
  • We don't know "why" anyone did anything. Was it the EWG letter? Was it the NY times? Something else? How do we know what caused them to fix the error or what "got their attention?"
  • By jove! You're right about how the segment was rebroadcast. I was confused by the reams of text and some reference to a blurb on "ABC world news now" or something. I'm firing my editor and I'm going to issue an apology for my error. I'm kidding. It doesn't make one iota of difference if they rebroadcast it 100 times, the point is exactly the same -- EWG didn't think the error was fixed fast enough, and they're probably right, it should have been fixed faster, hence the language about "not timely"
  • Like you just said, Stossel forwarded concerns to his producer, that, by definition, is "made efforts" to fix it. I don't agree that you have to know it's an error before you can fix the error. First you have to find out if it's an error.

Let me just add to the kafuffle one little thought. I'll probably regret saying this, but from reading all that stuff about this issue, it looks to me like the main point of Stossel's report was basically true and the error about the testing didn't really matter much. So I say "give him a break!"SecretaryNotSure 18:25, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Let me point out that there are a bunch of defenses of John Stossel's organic food error here. None of these defenses are mentioned at all in this article. Instead, only the negative stuff is mentioned. Despite all the criticism Stossel got about his error regarding what tests were done, the overlooked fact about Stossel's organic food report is "Most of it reflected conventional wisdom among scientists". Media Research Center wrote, "MediaNomics went to the videotape, and found that the wrong comments about pesticides were just two sentences in a report that lasted nearly ten minutes. Stossel’s main point -- that consumers are buying expensive organic foods because they mistakenly believe they are more nutritious -- was amply documented and hasn’t been contradicted by any of his critics." The same technique that conservatives use to discredit Michael Moore is used by progressives to discredit Stossel: highlight the minor errors to get people to overlook the fact that the major points are mostly correct. By highlighting the negatives and overlooking the positives, Wikipedians are furthering their cause. --JHP 21:01, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I hate to risk igniting the tempest in the teapot. I thought the bullet points was better and we've got to let go of the idea that we have make it sound like Stossel did something wrong just because there was some mistake in that "organic food" story. Anyone who knows anything about the news business knows that "mistakes happen." That's why newspapers are always issuing "corrections" to things. Maybe some of the more objective types will make some better edits.SecretaryNotSure 22:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Problem with bullets are that they create a trolling magnet for every criticism that can be inserted. Add a bullet and go, which creates much more conflict as the recent discussions have shown. Each bullet then gets expanded as each side details the POV, until the article becomes overwhelmed. Wikidemo added the bullets but now realizes it was a mistake (see his/her talk). It also goes against the manual of style for good writing. "Do not use lists [bullets] if the passage reads easily using plain paragraphs or indented paragraphs." I thought a couple of your edits were good but I'm going to look at it again and perhaps balance it a little. I agree with your point about mistakes made in journalism. Morphh (talk) 22:32, 06 October 2007 (UTC)
The point about "mistakes made in journalism" seems to be that we omniscient Wikipedia editors should consider whether a particular criticism commends itself to our superbly refined judgment; if it doesn't, we omit it. That approach would clearly violate NPOV. A significant number of readers would consider it significant that, for example, Stossel broadcast a report of test results of tests that hadn't actually been conducted, and that he broadcast a flat misstatement of fact concerning AIDS, on a matter where objective data were readily available from the CDC. One POV about Stossel is that he is not simply an honest journalist, who, like everyone, occasionally makes minor mistakes, but that he is instead far more likely to get his facts wrong than are most journalists. Our article should not adopt that POV, but also should not repress it, and should not censor facts based on our presupposition that the criticism of Stossel is false. We can present the facts of his mistakes, in the context of how long he's been broadcasting, and let the readers decide what conclusion the facts support. As for the organizational issue, subheadings would serve the reader better than bullets or paragraphs lumping together multiple issues. JamesMLane t c 08:10, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that's exactly what we do, we use our wisdom to decide if something was a mistake or if it showed some kind of bad faith. That what "neutrality" is, we don't simply list everything every crackpot claims about something. I would dispute that readers think would think it's all that significant that the testing wasn't done properly especially since the main point of the report was sound.

Yes, we do presuppose the criticism is false. We have to because anyone can claim anything. They have to prove it, otherwise we consider it false.

I'm thinking of a better edit, it would say something like this:

"In a story on organic food, Stossel showed organic food could kill you because it was infested with bacteria, and the regular food didn't have any more pesticides. However, the EWG bitterly disputed the pesticide tests. Further tests confirmed little pesticides in either sample, and concluded that the organic food would only kill you because of the bacteria. Stossel apologized...."

SecretaryNotSure 15:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

You have refuted the position that we should "list everything every crackpot claims about something." No one, however, is taking that position. Please see #Straw man argument being used for excessive deletions on this page.
Just as we don't list every lie Stossel has told, we don't list everything he's said that's true. We don't need to give a complete account of an entire broadcast when only part of it was criticized. Of course, I've repeatedly said that, along with criticisms, responses/defenses from Stossel or other prominent spokespersons should be included. I have no problem with a passage that lets the reader know that Stossel broadcast a report trumpeting the results of tests that hadn't actually been performed, that the report was rebroadcast even after the error was called to his and ABC's attention, and that one of the defenses offered was that the error occupied only a small fraction of the total airtime of the piece. JamesMLane t c 18:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Example

Ok, I figured we should probably start some examples to discuss.

In a story on pesticides and organic food, Stossel claimed that ABC News tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue.[1] The Environmental Working Group discovered that the produce samples had been tested only for bacteria; even after 20/20 received that information, the story was rebroadcast uncorrected.[2][3][4] Stossel was reprimanded by ABC and issued an apology over the incident.[5] In a story on laissez-faire economics, liberal economist James K. Galbraith said Stossel took a short interview clip out of context and that he was making the opposite point.[6] Stossel defended the overall work but acknowledged the possibility of error. Todd Seavey, the associate producer who conducted the interview, denied that there was any distortion.[7]

In a segment that investigated the extravagant finances and lifestyles of certain televangelists, ABC aired a misleading clip of TV preacher Frederick Price originally used (misleadingly) by the Discovery Channel. Price sued ABC for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. ABC News has twice aired apologies for the error.[8][9] Stossel produced and hosted a story on health care where he described the case of Tracy and Julie Pierce that was explored in Michael Moore's film, Sicko.[10] Julie criticized Stossel's comments saying they were distortions and factual inaccuracies, and that he didn't interview her before writing his opinion piece "Sick Sob Stories".[11] Stossel expressed sympathy and responded to some of her criticisms.[12]

Politically progressive organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR),[13] Media Matters for America (MMfA),[14] and others[15] have criticized Stossel over his political positions,[16] alleged distortion of facts,[17][18][19][20] and balance of coverage.[21][22] Critics also claim a conflict of interest for Stossel donating profits from his public speaking engagements (as per by his ABC contract) to, among others, a charity that produces a program that features him.[23][24][25][26] Stossel has responded to some of the criticism.[27][28][29]

  1. ^ "Give Me a Fake: Stossel Under Fire", Environmental Working Group, September 6, 2000. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  2. ^ Rutenberg, Jim. "Report on Organic Foods Is Challenged", The New York Times, July 31, 2000. Retrieved on September 1, 2007.
  3. ^ Rutenberg, Jim, Barringer, Felicity. "MEDIA; Apology Highlights ABC Reporter's Contrarian Image", The New York Times, August 14, 2000. Retrieved on September 5, 2007.
  4. ^ McElroy, Wendy. "Blaspheming Organic Food: The Persecution of John Stossel", LewRockwell.com, August 15, 2000. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  5. ^ Stossel, John. "20/20: Stossel Apology for Organic Food Report", ABC News, August 11, 2000. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  6. ^ http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1134
  7. ^ Rose, Ted (March 2000) "Laissez-Faire TV: ABC's John Stossel is a man on a mission to teach Americans about the evils of government regulation and the rewards of free enterprise." Brill's Content
  8. ^ Johnson, Gene C., Jr.. "Price Strikes Back at ABC", Los Angeles Wave, August 2, 2007. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  9. ^ Semuels, Alana. "Preacher sues '20/20,' alleging defamation", Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2007. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  10. ^ Stossel, John. "Sick Sob Stories", Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2007. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  11. ^ Pierce, Julie. "Open Letter to ABC's John Stossel ... from Julie Pierce, American SiCKO", Michael Moore, September 14, 2007. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  12. ^ Stossel, John. "Stossel Responds to 'Sicko' Letter", ABC News, September 25, 2007. Retrieved on September 27, 2007.
  13. ^ John Stossel. Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Retrieved on September 24, 2007.
  14. ^ John Stossel. Media Matters for America. Retrieved on September 24, 2007.
  15. ^ John Stossel. Media Transparency. Retrieved on September 24, 2007.
  16. ^ http://www.ewg.org/files/tamperingwithtruth_letter.pdf Letter from parents to Mr. Stossel
  17. ^ "Stossel Tampers with the Facts", Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, July 17, 2001. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  18. ^ Hart, Peter. "In Denial on Climate Change", Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, 2007-05. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  19. ^ http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1887
  20. ^ "Stossel presented skewed 20/20 segment on "stupid" public schools", Media Matters for America, 2006-01-19. Retrieved on September 26, 2007.
  21. ^ http://mediamatters.org/items/200709160003
  22. ^ Spencer, Miranda (May/June 1995) "Desperately Seeking Difference: ABC Finds Biology Is Destiny" Extra! (FAIR)
  23. ^ http://archive.salon.com/media/feature/2000/02/25/stossel/
  24. ^ http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020107/dowie/3
  25. ^ http://www.thegreatboycott.net/John_Stossel.html
  26. ^ http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientprofile.php?recipientID=761
  27. ^ CNN Reliable Sources transcript from the airing of June 30, 2001, 18:30 ET
  28. ^ http://www.ewg.org/node/19634
  29. ^ Stossel, John. "Smearing Education Choice", Townhall.com, 2006-07-26. Retrieved on September 24, 2007.

So here is a very quick and rough sample of what I'm thinking. Could be expanded and reworded but the idea is a few paragraphs focusing on the major controversies, with references to smaller criticism in a final paragraph. Let me have it... (cringing).. Morphh (talk) 15:17, 03 October 2007 (UTC)

Where are the lies that he never even denied? Like Parkinson's/AIDS and the change in incomes? Where is Julie Pierce's main point, that Stossel didn't contact her or her doctors before writing about them and her husband? Acct4 15:51, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Like I said, it could be expanded. However, I don't think the Parkinson's AIDS thing should be included.. we're discussing it above and laughing about the FAIR vs. FAIR. Perhaps footnotes on "alleged distortion of facts" but the fact that he hasn't responded makes it even less notable. Julie's comments are refered in the footnote for those that want to read it. Is that really a major point of controversy - Julie's feelings were hurt by Stossel? Poor Julie, but again, discuss and summarize major points. Morphh (talk) 16:08, 03 October 2007 (UTC)
Are you serious? I strongly disagree. Reporters are expected to refrain from lying to support a point they are trying to make, and transgressions are very serious. I have stricken your personal attack against Ms. Pierce. The fact that Stossel made no attempt to contact her or her physicians before writing about them is a serious breach of one of the first rules journalists are taught. If you continue to make personal attacks against the subjects we are discussing then this will require mediation. Acct4 16:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
We have several references that make the point of distortions of fact, and I included this one in the second paragraph. Stossel (or likely what would be the shows producer or staff) have no requirement or obligation to speak to Julie. Julie was part of a movie and thus a public figure and is open to media discussion without further contact. Now, it is a nice thing to do but they don't need her permission and it certainly is not an exception to the rule. People write about public figures every second of every day, what makes Julie special. I'm not saying I agree with it but we're talking about points that go toward the notability of John Stossel. What does Stossel not calling Julie (referenced in one self published aritlce), if that's even Stossel's job at ABC, have anything close to do with his notability, a bestselling author with over 25 years on 20/20? As far as personal attacks, that goes for something like me attacking you on wikipedia, not public figures (unless I do some major BLP violation) and I wasn't meaning it as an attack, just that it was not worth mentioning. Morphh (talk) 17:06, 03 October 2007 (UTC)
What does being a public figure (which, per New York Times Co. v. Sullivan she certainly is not) have to do with whether it is appropriate to get comment from those being reported on? Do you think that if you wanted to write a story about the quality of Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's treatment that you would somehow be absolved from attempting to contact his doctors for comment? That is preposterous. If there are any journalism authorities which agree with you, please bring them to our attention. But there are none, because being a public figure bears on the question of whether defamatory statements are legally actionable in the absence of actual malice, and not on the fundamental responsibility of a journalist to make sure they are informed from both sides of a story. (For example, Rush Limbaugh, certainly a public figure, complains today that, "Not one member of the media, not one congressman, nobody has called our office to ask, 'Did you really say this? And what did you mean by it?'") Acct4 17:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I think your Limbaugh statement actually proves my point, that Media often don't contact who they're writing about. You still have not address how this is notable but I'll add it in. I don't agree but we're here to work toward compromise and this is something I can live with. Morphh (talk) 18:04, 03 October 2007 (UTC)
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/03/msnbc-rush-no-comment/ CBGBxxx 21:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
It's not as if Mrs. Pierce, when she weighed in, had much to contribute on Stossel's subject besides misinformation about Canada. I haven't read Stossel's op-ed, since it's on a paysite, but as I understand it his point was that the expensive experimental treatment she was demanding wasn't going to be paid for by any form of health care, insurance or socialized. There are a lot of kidney and urinary tract cancers and if only 106 Americans and 4 Canadians got bone marrow transplants as treatment of them in the most recent five year period...that miniscule percentage has "experimental" written all over it.[5] And, no, if Michael Moore puts a documentary in the theaters no one has to reinterview his subjects before observing in print that they are engaging in misleading BS. Andyvphil 11:12, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I updated the Example with wikilinks and references so you get a better idea. This includes the changes suggested by Acct4 above, but does not include the changes suggested by SecretaryNotSure debated in the prior section. It is not that I disagree with SecretaryNotSure, I haven't even looked at it.. but since it is being debated, I thought it best to leave it out for now and adjust later after we reach some agreement on the base content and format. Morphh (talk) 21:39, 04 October 2007 (UTC)

Added some tweaks. Andyvphil 23:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The page lock will be removed tomorrow if we have come to some agreement. Is everyone ok with the above example as a replacement for the current Controversies list? We can make little tweaks here and there once it is in but if everyone is good with this as a base compromise, we can move forward. Morphh (talk) 20:13, 05 October 2007 (UTC)

I certainly don't care for the contentless final paragraph except as a summary. There should be a fuller treatment of the various accusations against Stossel, but I am considering the desirablity of a sub-article entitled Stossel and his Critics or somesuch to allay the concerns of those who think the subject overweights the main article. So, I'll acquiesce in the substitution but am not endorsing the underlying idea of the paragraph form and don't really agree that anything is settled. Andyvphil 22:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I've been watching this from the sidelines and think some people have axes to grind and seem to be becoming "owners" and fanatics of this article. I oppose adding the "supposed" conflicts, per the consensus discussion that has run it's course and will follow the discussion outcome. This article unfortunately is being prevented from article development because of edit wars and agendas. Media Matters has been questioned by many reputable journalists, organizations, and in many articles as a reliable source because of the known bias. I am not here to defend Stossel, but I am here to defend the sources being used in WP...or oppose. Again, many of these are non issues and only one organization is pointing the finger. Several well written suggestions have been voiced by several editors and perhaps the controversy is Media Matters trying to discredit Stossel. I support the paragraph format over the list format and I support the non media supported controversies be removed and not included. I may add another comment, but that is the sidelines view of this whole discussion. I am glad the article was locked and would support it being locked again should cool heads not prevail. One last comment, I propose that in the sentence Politically progressive organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR),[13] Media Matters for America (MMfA) the words Politically progressive be removed and instead Organizations be used in it's place since self-terms do not necessarily make you such. I can use the term, world renown pianist all I want, but because I don't know how to play piano answers the question much better than my self-termed title. --Maniwar (talk) 21:37, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
The purpose is not to conceal information, and the reader should not have to follow blue links or refs to get some idea of FAIR's & MM's orientation. It's left-of-left, and that should be in the article. Andyvphil 22:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Andyvphil, they are what they say they, defined by their actions. I don't think there is anything wrong with stating the political leaning, particularly when the above portion of the article describes how Stossel's political philosophies drive his work. It is notable to include that the organizations criticizing him are also driven by their political philosophies. Morphh (talk) 23:35, 05 October 2007 (UTC)

New version

I too have been on the sidelines. In response to this version: it's good to see people have (mostly) worked this out, and I think the new section is a good improvement. It is actually just as strong or stronger in establishing that Stossel is a controversial figure with credible complaints about his journalism, yet it doesn't read like a litany of partisan complaints. Good job. A few comments / critiques:

  • "firestorm of criticism" - the term is good English, but a little unencyclopedic even if completely uncontroversial. We try to be a little less evocative.
  • "...; the story was rebroadcast..." - a run-on sentence, I believe
  • "...and was suspended" - subject/verb agreement problem. The producer was suspended, not ABC News (as the structure of the sentence would indicate)
  • "In a segment that investigated..." - segments don't investigate. People investigate, perhaps in segments. English issue.
  • "ABC aired a misleading clip" - even if true, I don't think we call things misleading, we just report the facts and what others say. Note that "misleading" is used twice in the same sentence anyway, so it needs some editing.
  • "used (misleadingly) by the Discovery Channel" - implies that the Discovery Channel used the quote misleadingly, which I don't think is accurate. Also, the sentence is unclear on what the Discovery Channel has to do with anything. Probably needs to be edited for clarity.
  • "Stossel produced and hosted a story on health care..." - abrupt and confusing because it's a new subject from the first half of the paragraph. Either make it one big monster paragraph or if you do divide the criticisms, each paragraph needs something to tie it together.
  • "Politically progressive..." - I think that's okay here. I'd disfavor saying "liberal" or "conservative" before a single person or organization to avoid pigeon-holing, especially if people can just follow the link and read for themselves. But here we're talking about more than one organization, so it makes sense to explain what they have in common.

I see it's not edit protected so I'll make a few of the less controversial changes myself. Wikidemo 22:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've done everything I mentioned except fixing the paragraph arrangement, which would be more work. I did this in pieces so if anyone feels like reverting something they can revert one instead of the whole thing. Wikidemo 22:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Nice work, I like all the changes. Morphh (talk) 22:47, 06 October 2007 (UTC)

It's about 99.44% there. Has anyone else noticed the plethora of references? Do we really need so many? It's a virtual web link directory of everything someone has written who disagrees with Stossel. Like, do we really need 7 links to support the the idea they ran a clip of the preacher and his cars and houses? The basic facts aren't even in dispute. p.s. was that Stossels fault or was that some error made by ABC news?SecretaryNotSure 00:48, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

The multiple references may support different statements in the sentence. They may also offer secondary sourcing support but the direct statement may be based on the primary sourcing. The multiple references in the third paragraph are part of the compromise. Some wanted to remove it all together and some wanted to expand it, so this allows it to be condensed and make the statement with references for multiple criticisms, without going overboard and writing sections on criticism that does not meet the weight for inclusion. Now, it is certainly possible that we could remove certain refs. For example, if we have a secondary source that sufficiently covers the content statement, we could remove a primary source reference that was duplication. Could you explain your addition of the dubious tag in more detail? I don't understand what is in question. Morphh (talk) 0:59, 07 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes -- The sentence seems to say the story on TV on health care criticised the couple that's featured in the film Sicko, then talks about the thing Stossel wrote called "Sick Sob Stories." I thought those were two separate things. I thought "FAIR" criticised the TV show because they didn't like the experts he chose to interview and that the written thing by Stossel was criticised by the woman from "Sicko." And Stossel responded to the criticism by the woman from "Sicko" but not, so far as I know, the "criticism" from "FAIR." I could be mistaken of course so feel free to fix it or remove the tag if it's correct.SecretaryNotSure 14:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, corrected. Morphh (talk) 15:19, 08 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sad. So many completely different subjects, all in the same paragraphs. It's just really poor prose, no matter how you look at it. 1of3 22:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The idea is one subject "controversy" with several examples of notable criticism. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to satisfy everyone but I rather have poor prose than NPOV or BLP violations. Morphh (talk) 22:56, 08 October 2007 (UTC)

"ABC news found...."

Regarding this statement "ABC news found the producer to be at fault and suspended him for a month, and also reprimanded Stossel". Like Andyvphil, I also have some concern with this. Does the source say who's at fault? Obviously the producer is more at fault but Stossel was reprimanded, so this implies some fault I would think. However, I don't know that saying the producer was most at fault solves the problem either - same issue as we're assigning fault. Perhaps it should just be written "ABC News suspended the producer for a month and reprimanded Stossel...". That way we're not saying who was at fault and letting the reader decide... unless we have the source saying so (which we can repeat), I think this borders on original research. Morphh (talk) 13:18, 09 October 2007 (UTC)

I three agree. I like your edit Morphh. I reverted Andyvphil's edit because he is skipping the discussion to arbitrarily add POV statements that is a violation of BLP. I would support Morphh's change. --Maniwar (talk) 14:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Just a comment - whatever Andyvphil is doing it isn't WP:VANDALISM so please be a little more cautious in using that term. Vandalism is bad faith in the sense that there is no constructive purpose to try to improve the article. Whatever this user's transgressions are, he's trying to alter the article to a version that he thinks is better (even if his methods, disregard of consensus and Wikipedia policies, and interactions with other users have been problematic).Wikidemo 14:58, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I thought of that after the fact and that's why I didn't place a vandalism tag on his talk page. I used a script, and unfortunately, it automatically tags the revert as vandalism. I would have preferred to tag it as disruptive and/or POV editing (side note: these are considered vandalism), but was not given that option. I will state here, for the record, I was not trying to tag it as vandalism. Perhaps next time I'll manually undo the edit rather than use a script with and auto tag. I'm hoping Andyvphil will learn from this be more civil, community oriented, and join the discussion rather than running with his own agenda and POV. --Maniwar (talk) 15:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's certainly incoherent. My edit was "disruptive and/or POV editing" and therefor "considered vandalism", and resulted in Maniwar going to my talk page to issue ==Another cautioning==, threatening to "plac[e] a vandal tag on [your] page...next time". But he actually only called what I did vandalism because the bot made him do it.
For the record, my first "vandalizing" edit changed "ABC news found the producer to be at fault and suspended him for a month, and also reprimanded Stossel..." to "ABC News decided the producer was most at fault and suspended him for a month, and also reprimanded Stossel...", and I was reverted by Maniwar with accusations of (1) violating "talk page consensus" (the version] arrived at on the talk page actually read only "Stossel was reprimanded by ABC and issued an apology over the incident" -- the first mention on the talk page of the version with the producer in it is Morph's approving comment on my edit, so the idea that it represented "talk page consensus" is entirely hallucinatory), (2) "POV wording" (my POV was that the "N" in "ABC news" should be capitalized, that the statement that the producer was at fault jarred with the statement that Stossel was reprimanded, and that "found" implied ambiguously either more discovery or authority than was appropriate), and (3) BLP concerns (huh? I don't have a clue).
Then I edited again, this time adopting Morph's suggestion, which Maniwar had actually said he agreed with(!), and I was again reverted, this time with an accusation of "vandalism" complete with a warning to my talk page. Now, how much obnoxious provocation has to take place before I'm allowed to notice that that is what it is? Andyvphil 22:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Andyvphil, posts like this is what got you in trouble. Unfortunately, you have everyone jumpy because of your history and pattern. If you were inserting the agree upon change, it would have been much better for you to say Inserting change per discussion or something to that fact rather than (Undid revision 163223726 by Maniwar Against consensus? POV? What consensus? What POV?). Do you not see the tone and the difference it makes? I would encourage you to step away from this article if its frustrating or bringing out emotions. Interesting, how several editors see the exact same thing? I really would encourage you to step away and calm down. --Maniwar (talk) 01:40, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
You're confused. I'm not in trouble, just pissed off. I stand by my edit comment, and the fact that you reverted and threatened to put a "vandal" tag on my user page without even looking at the edit doesn't put you in good light, in case you haven't figured it out. Andyvphil 15:38, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

New new version

SecretaryNotSure has made quite a few changes to the article and particularly to the controversy section under discussion. I'm not sure what the best course of action is at this point, we could leave it to the normal editing process where others will review and modify or we could revert it and move all the changes here for discussion. I haven't had time to review the content but I'm probably for the normal editing process unless it looks like it is moving toward edit waring. Morphh (talk) 13:41, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Was NotSure responsible for removing the central fact that Stossel was reprimanded by ABC? Not, incidentally, for the "long delay", but for ignoring the correction? Andyvphil 13:53, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure, but if you feel it important - add it back in. I only suggest that we do so succinctly. We don't need to get into the weeds of the debate, but we want to make sure we're not eliminating a POV. Morphh (talk) 14:19, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
If you feel it important...? It's not as if Stossel has been reprimanded more than once by his employer. If the other edits are of this quality I may go for your suggestion of a mass revert. Andyvphil 23:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh... I was responding to the second half of the statement regarding the "ignoring". Didn't know the first part was removed as well. Morphh (talk) 23:42, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Looked again and saw "inadvertent" had reappeared. Enough. I've reverted that paragraph back to the version Maniwar called "vandalism". *grin* Andyvphil 23:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Cautioning Andyvphil

this is the second caution I'm forwarding to Andyvphil. This one is a strong caution to be followed by reporting. (Point taken, and warning has been moved to Andyvphil's user page, but warning still stands). --Maniwar (talk) 19:05, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

While violations of WP:NPA such as Andyvphil's are deplorable, I don't think it is appropriate to use templates meant for user talk pages on article talk pages. 1of3 14:06, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
In case anyone is wondering what this is about, take a look at the box at the beginning of "Consensus Discussion" above. [6] Maniwar took it upon himself to enclose the section in a template designed to archive discussions, adding a comment "deciding" the result, in the manner of a closing admin in an AfD. (It wasn't an AfD, and the person who raised an AfD wouldn't be allowed to close it even if he were an admin, but never mind...) He then deleted my mild comment demurring from his "decision". Oh, and he still seems to be under the impression that I previously violated 3RR, despite my attempt to set him straight.[7] As I noted before, this is what is called chutzpah. Andyvphil 00:08, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I believe it was for this edit. I don't need to know the background to know that talking about another editor in that kind of language is inappropriate. Wikidemo 00:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Brilliant of you to point to the same comment I did. My attention to your opinion is contingent on, among other things, your paying attention to the background. Andyvphil 20:10, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
You're coming very close to a civility warning right there.Wikidemo 12:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Your telling me you feel free to upbraid me without considering (or on the evidence of your duplication, even looking at) the backround I supplied sounds pretty uncivil to me. As was this deletion of my comment from this page. Andyvphil 12:33, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
You crossed the line there. Civility warning extended. Wikidemo 12:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
This is coming from someone who responded to being civilly informed that it was bad form to make an edit protection request as a way of achieving temporary victory in an edit war by accusing me of "attacking" him.[8] Maniwar "warns" me of 3RR after my first revert (of him; I'd reverted someone else, once, in the previous 24 hours), then expunges my comment ("spam"!) from a section of this page that he has declared his own, and I'm not allowed to say that he's acting like he owns the place? Now Wikidemo accuses me of incivility for being sarcastic about his unwillingness to look at or comment on the provocation. The worst I'm guilty of is feeding the trolls by not giving them the last word. Andyvphil 20:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I am taking you to AN/I for that. Wikidemo 04:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Done - here. Wikidemo 06:20, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Stick a fork in it. [9] Only two editors who responded thought Wikidemo should be embarassed. Andyvphil 12:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
No, you should stop being uncivil and stop making personal attacks. Wikidemo 02:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
"No"? "No", what? I can't even figure out what you're in denial about. The result was as I described it, and it's been archived from the AN/I page. Andyvphil 07:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
It's clear you're not going to stop insulting me and that for now nobody's going to do anything about it. You've been warned and both your behavior on this page and the warnings are matter of record. Cross the line again and I'll report you again. As simple as that, though it would be a lot simpler if you would cut out the insults. Wikidemo 07:40, 14 October 2007 (UTC) so can we please both agree to close down this particular line of discussion?Wikidemo 08:22, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Nobody's going to do anything about "it" because nobody other than Maniwar (whom I demonstrated was reliably unreliable) agreed with you. And two neutral editors agreed with me, apparently. OK, last word to you. Andyvphil 08:29, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Last word is that we're not going to talk about this because it's fruitless. If you don't direct insulting language my way I won't complain.Wikidemo 08:42, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Engaging

I've been doing some edits, trying to make jazz the article up a little. (I noticed the WP:TPA talks about it should be written as an interesting thing to read, not just a list of facts and figures.

Thanks for the help, I'm trying to maintain npov, not all my edits have been accepted, that's fine. But can I ask why we are giving so much weight to these "crazy groups" who say Stossel did this or that or lied or made up things or he's fake, etc etc etc? Why not just mention such groups exist and list their websites. Maybe briefly mention what they say.

There are certain groups that are not neutral. They have some axe to grind. god knows why, but they are "watching" only certain people and criticise them all the time. These are not neutral press outlets, they are interest groups or reverse-fan clubs or whatever. I would favor not being the co-enablers for these crazy groups.SecretaryNotSure 01:45, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

As I've mentioned before, it's in the nature of Wikipedia that if the criticisms by Media Matters, FAIR, etc. are not in the article they will be added to the article, and that it would be better to have a brief, but sufficiently complete, NPOV treatment of such allegations as are likely to be added, either in this article or in a companion sub-article, to inoculate this article against POV insertions of the same material, time and again.
Also, there have been some major problems with your edits. In the "no pesticide residue" controversy you keep inventing an "inadvertent" lab error that never happened (Stossel, apparently at the filming stage, got the completely unneccessary idea that the pesticides-on-produce test had been performed; both the request for lab work and the lab work itself appears to have been completely in order) and you keep leaving out the fact of Stossel's rebuke from his employer, which is the most telling fact about this case.
Secondly, in the Awards section, your edits put quotes around words that did not appear in the cite.
Thirdly, you deleted the Frederick Price material, on the grounds that Stossel was not involved, apparently because the wording was "ABC broadcast...", apparently without looking at the cites which made it clear that it was a 20/20 segment for which Stossel was responsible and for which he was being sued. Agreed, it is likely that the error was that of a low-level fact checker or other flunky who dug up this particular material (and who in turn was probably misled by Discovery Channel Lifetime Network misuse)...but Stossel got sued, and it got covered in multiple RS. Reread my first paragraph.
I could go on, but will stop now to see if you are going to take my points. Andyvphil 09:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Andyvphil on these. The article at long last has grown more stable and less controversial. It took some arguing and a lot of compromise and discussion to get there. Under the circumstances, I would recommend that SecretaryNotSure or anyone else wanting to further improve it take take a more gradual approach than to redo a bunch of sections that everyone's more or less okay with. Maybe a few at a time is better. Also these edits have sometimes introduced some errors, POV shifts, or awkward phrasing, so please be extra careful to quality check. It's pretty well written right now, a solid B-class article, and I'd hate to see it suffer from edit entropy so soon. Wikidemo 09:39, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not sure what the gradual approach is. I guess you mean justify each change here. OK. Not sure what "edit entropy" is either, but it sounds bad so we'll try to avoid that.

Yes, I see there's a peripheral involvement with Stossel and the preacher's comments. If your expertise says it should be included, that's fine. But as you say, you recognize it's a minor mistake and doesn't really tell us much about Stossel -- So I say, then write it that way. Instead, you're telling us you have to make it sound worse because this is wikipedia and if we don't make it worse, someone else will?" Do I understand that rationale correctly?

By the way, the newspaper says they made the error -- it was pretty careless especially since they know this guy makes his living based on his personality and casting him in a bad light was pretty serious -- However, I think it's an open legal case (wikipedia problems alert!) and all we know if that ABC 20/20 broadcast the mistake, they issued two retractions, the guy is still suing saying that's not enough... we don't know who's right here. We especially have to be careful not to do exactly the same mistake and say something that sounds like "Stossel was sitting around with this videotape and said lets cut out this part and make that guy sound like he's bragging about his riches..." We agree that would be a bad thing to do, we also agree it would be bad if we did the same thing to Stossel.

The same with the comment about the lettuce. Somewhere way above, a while ago you even noted that it was a minor error, and it got blown out of proportion. I think what you remarked was that sure, ABC News must get thousands of crazy letters from this group, and by god, they got lucky this time and were right, and so "scored a point" of some sort. This was made worse by the producer who ignored most of these complaints, etc etc ... without retrying the case here... you expressed the same idea that I agree with, that it wasn't that big a deal, just a mistake, but it was a PR coup for some interest group.... correct me if I'm wrong. So, I say the same as above -- write it that way!

I don't buy into this defeatist notion that "well, this is wikipedia and even if we write it correctly, someone will come along and change it to something bad, so we might as well make it sound bad to begin with." What kind of philosophy is that? I say write it the way you believe it to be true as best you can.

Getting back to what I was asking above... what's the rationale for including any or every group or person with an axe to grind? If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying they aren't reliable or good sources, or they are nuts, but because this is wikipedia, we know someone will add this bad information -- so therefore we should add the bad information first?

hmmm...

Well lemme get back the content here:

  • Added a statement about what Stossel said about his winning awards. Not a quote, this is my paraphrase of what Stossel said. As it is now, we are quoting half his statement and it sounds like he's bragging, when really he was telling a self-effacing joke. Because he's said this many times, at just about ever speaking engagement, that's why I thought a general paraphrase was better than any single quotation.
  • There's no need to make errors seem like more than they are. No reason to use "loaded language" or cast things into a false light or give undue weight. In fact that's a disservice to Stossel and to the reader. Yes, there is a small POV shift there, from negative to neutral.
  • I kinda like my reworking of the Shultz attack. Not to say it can't be improved, actually it has been. This is right from Stossel book, it reflects a certain POV. You know, being a slave to NPOV (I know this is sacrilege) can make the article worse. If we are to be truly NPOV, we should write how Shultz was attacked by Stossel. After all Shultz was just standing there backstage minding his own business and this rude reporter come and assaulted him with that question, saying he was a "a fake" and Shultz defended his profession by demonstrating how he's not a fake, etc etc. heheh.SecretaryNotSure 17:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Two cases in point from the past half hour.  ::*here you edit three different statements here with an edit summary reference to "KISS." If we're going to cite aphorisms, I'll counter with "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The statements were fine as they were, and the edits in two out of three cases each make the sections weaker in multiple ways. Regarding the pesticide residue / organic foods issue, changing "claimed that ABC News tests had shown" to "said" eliminates most of the context and relevance of the example. The point isn't that he said something inaccurate, it's that he misstated the nature of a laboratory test. Pointing out that there was a three-way miscommunication is of marginal and dubious value. The cold fact is he said one kind of lab test revealed nothing when it was not that kind of lab test. You removed the mention that it was broadcast again after the inaccuracy was revealed, as well as that the network suspended the producer and reprimanded Stossel, all of which are important. In short, the edit made the whole thing a whole lot less murky but without actually tilting the balance to be more sympathetic to Stossel, just less useful. Regarding the minister's bragging about wealth, in some ways your change was an improvement. However, saying that ABC retracted the statement twice is illogical and obviously inaccurate. A retraction is a removal of a claim by denying it. You can't do that twice, only once. They apparently apologized twice, which is what it originally said. Second, saying that the minister is suing for damages related to defamation subtly implies that there are in fact damages and defamation took place. Nobody is going to read it that way, but the wording is off. The better way to say it is that the minister sued (past tense - the act of filing a claim) for damages and IIMD (you removed that claim). Past tense is important here, because when you changed it to say "is suing" and "the case is ongoing" without dating your comment, you build in obsolescence to the page. It's going to become inaccurate as soon as the suit is over, and someone will have to change it. I see nothing wrong with your third change, to the Canadian health care.
  • In this edit you replace what you call "dreary prose" with something more evocative but less encyclopedic. Your lead sentence is weak. The point to make isn't that he was on one of his attempts to uncover fakes when he got beat up by a wrestler. If the story is worth including it's fore the incident, not that it was one of his routine acts of skepticism - in fact, an expose that professional wrestling is "fake" is utterly uninteresting. Yes, it's more visceral to say Stossel got clocked twice then knocked to the ground but that's not actually what the source says. The New York Times source is wonderfully written and conveys quite a bit in a few words. The key point isn't that the attack came from both sides (which is an inference, not what it actually says), but that the wrestler hit him, taunted him, then hit him again. But none of that really matters - you may call it dreariness, but limiting things to what's relevance is something I would call encyclopedic writing.
  • I fixed the first issue because it went to accuracy but left the second because it's more a style thing. But as I was starting this message and momentarily left to take care of some vandalism on another page you reverted my corrections. I restored them. The normal consensus problem is that if a proposed change like your 3-in-1 edit is rejected you back off and talk about it on the talk page. Simply restoring is contentious. Now, that's a lot of a mess to create in a half hour, and part of the reason I'm urging you not to fix what isn't broken. The article is good as it is and your many repeated edits are a mixed bag. I've been leaving this article alone for the most part and watching git improve. But I get the sense that if I go away for a day I could find it edited many, many times and in a much worse state. That's the "entropy" I'm talking about, chipping away at the quality of the article by over-editing. That's also what I mean by slowing it down. Take a breather, fry some other fish. The effort spent to deal with this article is not worth the marginal improvement. Wikidemo 21:39, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. We'll eventually get it. If you can, give me some guidance on why we should quote the crazy groups. That was the original question.SecretaryNotSure 21:59, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

By "crazy groups" do you mean FAIR and Media Matters? It's a compromise. Some people wanted to add every derogatory thing they could find and heap on, others wanted to remove it for whatever reason (defending Stossel and his conservative/skeptical agenda, genuine interest in balance and reliable sources, etc). We could go back and forth and fight this forever, or we could agree on a compact, reasonably written version of the strongest of the allegations against him. I think we've done the latter. There's no denying that this is a controversial guy who's been accused of and admitted to some significant lapses of journalistic standards, and the sources do add up to that. Best to convey that in a reasonable and nonpartisan way, yet keep the article as a whole focused on its more important encyclopedic purpose, to tell readers who he is, what he does, what he's accomplished in life, and what its importance is for the news media, and so on. So to answer directly, we're quoting these groups because they're the best sources on the most significant of the claims of lapses of journalistic standards. I'm assuming they're the best sources. If anyone can find a Wall Street Journal in-depth piece that covers the same ground, that would be a better thing to quote than FAIR. Wikidemo 22:09, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and sorry if I've overlooked that some of the changes I describe above have gone through consensus. I didn't notice it but I haven't been 100% following all the discussions...probably it's for the best that I don't become constantly involved on this page. Wikidemo 22:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I haven't looked at the overnight entropy, but want to respond to to some of the points NotSure made to me that haven't been addressed by Wikidemo.
First, about the Awards edits: Don't use quotes around a paraphrase. Ever. On the talk page you can use a locution like ~"quote"~ to indicate a semi-quote (e.g., from memory) but that's not in the WP:MOS, so keep it out of mainspace.
Second, about your repeated counsel that if I think something is true I should write it that way. Can't. This is basic. Viewing an event through the prism of the sources I form a mental model of the underlying actual event, complete with allowances for uncertainly. That is my POV on the event. And that affects my choice of what things need to be said in mainspace. But I can only choose from the range of things said in citation from what Wikipedia rules call "reliable sources". For example, I am nearly certain that the Discovery Channel Lifetime Network's use of the Price audio was just as misleading as 20/20's (else, why did they use it?), but the fingerpointing in the cites doesn't go back beyond the church watchdog who supplied the quotes, and I can't say that he was probably misled too unless I can quote a RS expressing that opinion. And I can't. So far. Andyvphil 23:36, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the commentary. Now I understand what you mean by entropy. I'm going to ponder. Well, two things: First, why we "can't" write things that we believe to be the closest to the truth ...

And 2nd, I'm going to ponder the comment that it doesn't make any difference if a guy is told some test results, and he reports what the lab told him Vs. A guy makes up things and says some tests were done when they weren't. Those are two different things. We'll go with version 1 unless someone has evidence for version 2. We shouldn't "libel" anyone.

You're right about the word "retraction" (kinda) the source says he's upset by the "two retractions" but the reporter says they broadcast the retraction twice. Yes, technically you can only "retract" a story, you can't retract it twice... whatever.. And where did they get "Discovery Channel" involved? The source says it was from "Lifetime."SecretaryNotSure 00:21, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Stossel's in charge of his own show, right? He's not just reading from a script. He's collecting information, synthesizing, and reporting on things. His job as a professional skeptic is to get past other people's inaccuracies and misconceptions. Nobody would reasonably accuse him of lying about the test results. But he's the one ultimately responsible for the accuracy of what he reports on. It's a mistake however you slice it. That's why it's not all that relevant (I think) whether the problem is internal miscommunication versus some other internal failure that would give rise to a mistake (e.g. mislabeling samples, bad paperwork, failure to double-check, etc). Wikidemo 04:30, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
EWG etc. did accuse him of lying about the test results ([http://www.ewg.org/reports/givemeafake]"Stossel lied..."), though I'll agree with you that they weren't being reasonable. Now, we can't say Stossel didn't lie, since that's not a verifiable fact (though it is my POV, and apparently yours) but it is a mistake to reduce the level of detail at which we cover this incident below the level at which a Wikipedia reader who encounters the assertion that "Stossel lied" can reach a reasonable estimate of how likely that is by reading this article, without following citations for himself. Andyvphil 06:33, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. First, it's not the "John Stossel Show" so we aren't here to decide who runs the show. We can only go by what they (ABC News) tell us. It's produced by some guy we're not going to mention, not John Stossel. Presumably he is synthesizing, analyzing. I think we basically agree, that no matter what caused the error, it was an error and Stossel corrected that and apologized. And, we agree the error wasn't even that important. We all agree there's no basis to say "he lied" - because the term "lied" implies something more, we would be saying he knew something to be false and said it anyway, etc. OK fine, we agree. So lets write it that way.

The 2nd point I have to disagree that we "can't say he didn't lie." Yes we can. Not only can we, we must not say he lied because we don't have any evidence he lied. Some group said that, that's not a reason to repeat anything. What if someone said he was a child molester? Should we include that because "we can't say he didn't molest children" because we don't know... Well, yes we do, unless there's reason to believe he molested children then it's not true and we don't say it. Same with someone saying "he lied."

One last thing, there's no need for the [t]hey. He spoke those words, he didn't write them. Well actually he may have written that also somewhere else but I don't know. It doesn't matter, we're not quoting the editor at newsmax we're saying what Stossel said, we aren't "bound" by the way the newsmax guy decided to punctuate it. Also, it's trivial and just makes it harder to read for no good reason. The only time we would worry about something like that is if he dropped a word and maybe we know what he meant and that was added for clarity, that sort of thing. We would add the [t] or [they] for clarity if he said it and made some mistake. Like, for example if he said "hey don't like me" and we know what he meant to say we could write it as "[t]hey don't like me."SecretaryNotSure 14:50, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

There were some edits today, something about "logrolling" and "lawyering" or something. I don't know what that is. From all I can tell, it seems to be "lets rephrase this to make it seem like it was stossels fault and what some group says is true and what stossel says is false.. etc etc. And then it goes on to say how groups like "MMfA" is some kind of neutral "watchdog group" and leave out even the implication that they have some poltical leanings or motives ... nah! The reader doesn't need to know that... nah! Just leave it out...SecretaryNotSure 01:20, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the criticism section, I think it has suffered from entropy with regard to structure and formating. Looks to me that it has reverted back to the dated bullet list but without the bullets. [Morphh shakes his head and takes a Motrin] Morphh (talk) 17:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Except that the bullet list was a vey brief phenomenon. What we're actually reverting to is the pre-bullet-list form, slightly improved by chronological ordering. The question is what lesson you draw from this. Andyvphil 22:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

That this article needs more watching than I care to give it. The length of this section is giving me concern again? Why the dates, Why the article titles, and all the verbose stuff that someone should use a reference for. Keep it to notability, keep it succinct. Stop expanding the criticism!!!!! Do we have to go through another BLP discussion? (not directed at Andyvphil.. just a global comment) Morphh (talk) 4:28, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I was hoping you'd reconsider your image of what a Wikipedia article ought to be in the light of this experience. If you are more tolerant of letting it go the way it wants to go you'll find you have less entropy to fight, I think. Quoting self, 2 September: ...it is guaranteed that the criticisms will be reinserted time and time again, usually in unbalanced form, if an adequate NPOV treatment is not present. Andyvphil 07:29, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Controversies

This section needs some work I think - should have dates in the text and be in date order, and shorter. I'm removing speculation - encyclopedia should never include the phrase "but this is pure speculation"! Also not sure the wrestling item is really notable enough for inclusion. The guy is an investigative reporter - of course his subjects say he's not telling the truth. We need to be careful what we include here because of BLP concerns.Tvoz |talk 06:12, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

And I think using Lew Rockwell as a source is not a good idea, especially when there are more neutral, reliable sources. I'm also removing some completely POV wording and conclusions. Tvoz |talk 06:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
A statement by Schults that Stossel wasn't telling the truth about wrestling wouldn't be significant enough to merit inclusion (unless there were other reasons to include the criticism). What's notable here, though, is the incident itself. Many reporters are criticized but few are punched out, and fewer still allege permanent physical injury and win settlements. It's a distinctive incident in Stossel's career and should be included, but not under the "Controversies" section. As for Lew Rockwell, I favor inclusion of opinions from this right-wing source and inclusion of the contrary opinions from left-wing sources. The analysis I gave above concerning Media Matters applies to Lew Rockwell also. JamesMLane t c 08:19, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I left the wrestling matter in, but moved it up to top of that section to be in chronological order - if you can find a better place for it in the article, sure. As for Lew Rockwell - I didn't mean that as necessarily a blanket statement for the whole article - I was referring specifically (but neglected to say) to the paragraph about the organic food matter which is well cited without a POV opinion piece. Otherwise, I'm not thrilled with using either demonstrably rightwing or leftwing sources, but agree that if they are included they should be balanced, of course. Rockwell's just not needed in that particular item. Tvoz |talk 08:36, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
I see that Lew Rockwell was put in again to the organic farming controversy - what is that biased source adding to this section other than the opinion of the writer? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems the facts are covered by the 3 other citations. And where is the balance with a left-wing source as indicated above - and please don't tell me the New York Times? Also, editors should use "Show preview" so that they don't introduce errors such as the misspelling of Galbraith's name in a paragraph that already had it spelled correctly up front. Tvoz |talk 17:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, where's the evidence that only the "Environmental Working Group" complained, and no one else? So then why is the story about them?SecretaryNotSure 22:36, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, where's the evidence that the error being corrected is somehow related to an article in the New York Times? (i.e. it says "after the new york times took notice, then ABC news did something)?SecretaryNotSure 22:47, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Noticed exactly that phrase in one of the sources last night (~"...after the NY Times..."~) and there is no question that the EWG letter to Stossel was his notice that he'd screwed up -- all the relevant sources either refer to it or no other. Gotta run, and I don't have time or motivation to dig exact cites up for you right now. Your edits keep introducing blatant errors and omissions, and there is little point in trying to enlighten you if you show no sign of listening. Andyvphil 23:31, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

No hurry. We can wait. When you find that evidence, let us know. 'Till then we'll just remove the parts that aren't supported by evidence, when you get time to let us know where the evidence is, we'll put it back, if warranted. Thanks for your help.SecretaryNotSure 00:44, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Footnotes 25, 27, & 28 all state that EWG was the organization that wrote to Stossel about the error. Please stop removing that fact. --JHP 05:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

That wasn't the question. We know EWG wrote or did something. The question is where is the evidence that EWG and no one else looked into the story?SecretaryNotSure 07:30, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't say that "no one else" looked into it, so stop bringing in strawmen. The sources are clear that the EWG were the first group to raise the issue. There's nothing misleading in our text. Further, please stop changing the capital "T" in the quote - it is a direct quote from the source which correctly starts with a capital "T". You've raised the issue and it has been answered over and over again, yet you continue to revert to your incorrect version. What is the problem? Read a basic grammar book, and WP:MOSQUOTE and take a look at the source and stop changing "They" to "they". There is nothing unclear about the quote and your changing it and then adding the gratuitous "edited for clarity" is getting to be annoying already. Same thing for your insistence on incorrectly editing the sentence about e. coli. The source reads "Mr. Stossel said that organic food seemed more likely than conventional food to be contaminated by E. coli bacteria." More likely is saying something that you keep stepping on. Your edits are starting to be disruptive. Please stop. Tvoz |talk 08:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The text implies that the EWG was the only one. It's not explicit, if we must include reference to the particular group, it shouldn't falsely imply they did something more than they did, also, the point of the whole thing isn't what some group did, it's what Stossel did. The article is about Stossel, not everyone who disagrees with Stossel.

Where's the evidence that EWG were "the first ones" to question the statement? That's what EWG says, that's what EWG told the NY Times, but that's not proof of anything. We would have to ask ABC news or Stossel or the producer how many letters or calls did they get, and how where were they from? There's nothing about that published, the sources are simply statements from EWG that "they" were the ones who found this error. Isn't it possible that other members of the organic food industry complained? It seems likely, and one source does talk about complaints from "the organic farmers." Are the environmentalist also farmers? If not, then someone else complained.

I'll look into the "T" thing some more, but it seems like an unnecessary confusion, the problem is it began a sentence in the other guys article, but in the phrase here it's mid-sentence.

I appreciate that something is "getting annoying already."

Yes, one newspaper article uses the term "more likely to be contaminated" -- that's an acceptable way to say it but just because someone says it that way doesn't mean we have to accept one article's phrasing as the last word. When you look at the report itself, and what ABC News says, they said the stuff was contaminated, not "more likely to be" contaminated. We are trying to synthesize and "boil down" a long and complex dispute into a few sentences, so we can't just pick and choose phrases that we happen to like. I guess we'll have to look at it some more and come up with the best way to put it.

Speaking of E. coli, why not wiki link that? Why keep removing the wiki link for E. coli? We linked the EWG, we presume the reader might want to know more about this group, why wouldn't the reader want to know what "E. coli" is? Not every reader is some kind of scientist!

The statement that Stossel rebroadcast the report "after being told of the error" is also silly. Are we implying that if some guy calls up the news station and tells them something, they should change their story? Like, when Stossel said the organic stuff was infested with bacteria, I'm sure some people didn't "like" that. They wrote to him and told him to remove that. However, he didn't, because that's what the testing showed. Do you want the news people to just print anything someone says? If that were the case, then they should have said the organic food was great "because someone called me and told me it was."

That's not how the news business works. You can't just call up the newspaper and "tell them" to change something, no matter how much you don't like something. They have to research it, they have to determine if their original story was correct or if it was wrong. If it was correct they don't change it, if it's wrong they issue a correction or a retraction.

So it's silly to have a statement in there that says Stossel re-broadcast it "even after being told by the environmental club/group that they thought it was wrong." From putting together the information in all the sources, it seems that Stossel did double check that fact, and was told that's what the testing showed. The way it is now, we are implying that Stossel knew it was wrong and said it anyway. That's casting "false light" and is libelous.

That's what the producer was diciplined for, he repeated to Stossel that the testing was done, that's what all the sources imply.

I'm trying to go through the sources to try to find any justification for saying that the error was fixed because the N Y Times ran some story. So far, no luck, so at this point it's "pure speculation."

Please stop adding libelous material to this article.SecretaryNotSure 09:12, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand your difficulty "going through the sources", but my memory was not in error. One of them [10] says this: "In fact, it was not until The New York Times raised the issue in a Media Talk column on July 31 that ABC News began to investigate the situation in earnest and found that the test results in question did not exist." It also says: "After the report was first broadcast, advocates with the Environmental Working Group wrote a letter that alerted Mr. Stossel that the researchers said they had not conducted the tests", and makes no suggestion that any other group did so. Nor does any other cite. There was an organic food group that got involved in the bacteria issue, but it was the EWG that was enough on the ball to realize that "no pesticide residue" was an impossible result in the era of the mass spectrometer, when you can detect pesticide residues in ice cores at the South Pole. It's in any case absurd to think that we need to prove no other group raised the issue in order to say that the EWG did so. Andyvphil 10:03, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and while I'm at it: "Top ABC News executives began looking into potential problems with the report two weeks ago, after The New York Times addressed them in an article... Problems with the report were first brought to light by the members of the Environmental Working Group..." [11] Andyvphil 10:41, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, fantastic, now we're making some progress. You've supported the idea that the EWG was the first one to complain. You've also partly supported that there seemed to be some connection between the NY Times article and ABC's investigation. The NY Times says it was the NY Times that fixed things, just like EWG says it was the EWG that fixed things, and of course, ABC News says ABC News fixed things... they all seem to put themselves at the center of things.

Note, however, we can't change the article to indicate there's an absolutely known causation between the article and finding the error. Notice that even the NY Times dances around the issue, they say it was after they noted it ABC News (not Stossel) started looking into it again, they never assert it was because of the media bits. And it was not an "article" it was a thing in "media bits" which is their way of saying it's not as highly reliable as an article. So, we should not change the wording to "article." Unless it would be confusing to the reader, in which case it would be like the damn "t" dispute, where we would be better off going with what is simpler.

OK, so far we've determined we have to change the article so that:

  1. It can mention EWG and wikilink EWG, but it must be corrected so as not to say it was the EWG and the EWG alone.
  2. We can mention the NY Times "media bits" piece, preferably not call it an "article" and not say directly that the NY Time media bit "caused" ABC News to investigate (not Stossel).

Now some other issues. The sources say Stossel was reprimanded in a letter. The article cuts out the part "in a letter." Those are two different things, being reprimanded and being reprimanded in a letter, the former being much less serious. So, since the sources say "reprimanded in a letter" we must not change that to "was reprimanded."

Next, the source says "Then we made things worse. In July, I repeated the report! And the error." And we changed that to "the story was rebroadcast months later with not only the inaccurate statement uncorrected,..." Why did we change "error" to "inaccurate statement?" We are implying that Stossel knew the statement was "inaccurate" because we're saying that, in those words, he said "an inaccurate statement"

Also, why did we add the "he said" and "he asserted" to some of Stossel's direct statements. OK, he said is probably fine, but then at the end we changed "he said" to "he asserted" ... sort of a none neutral POV dig meaning "we don't really believe him." So we should change "he asserted" should be just changed to "he said" or he "repeated" or "he reiterated..." that the gist of the report was accurate.

The other issue is we shouldn't confabulate ABC News, the producer and 20/20 and Stossel and pretend they are all "Stossel." Obviously, from all we've read, Stossel was assured, each time it was questioned that the tests were done and they were fine. I know some people don't like that, and would love to just change history and make it Stossel's fault, but we are an encyclopedia. More about that some other time if you have any questions.

That's probably enough to think about right now. Good luck and thanks for looking into the matter.SecretaryNotSure 20:08, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The vigor with which you fight your straw men is quite tiring to watch. We nowhere said EWG was the only entity to notice Stossel's boner, but neither do we have to raise the fanciful possibility that ABC acted because some unknown entity, nowhere present on the record, brought it to ABC executives' attention independent of the EWG-NYTimes information path. And your suggested parallel -- EWG says EWG was responsible, NYTimes says NYTimes was responsible, ABC says ABC was responsible -- is nonsense. EWG says EWG noticed the error, NYTimes says EWG noticed the error but that ABC acted only when NYTimes put it in print, and ABC makes no claim that it discovered the error internally. And "asserted" is used in place of its synonym "said" because "said...said...said" bores the eyes to tears. Saying "he repeated that the gist of the report was accurate" would, however, show a tin ear in the editor who wrote it since we do not have him admitting previously that only the gist of his report was accurate. But I have more severe problems with your edits than merely a tin ear. You left out the fact that Stossel was reprimanded by ABC on multiple occasions, most recently thought "A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on 20/20 showed that the organic vegetables were contaminated with E. coli bacteria" was a sensible summary (it's not -- both organic and non-organic were contaminated, although the former twice as often and, when contaminated, contaminated to a greater extent), etc., etc. You simply get it wrong a lot. Andyvphil 08:07, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. Now back to the question under discussion. As you can see, every time we add some other extraneous detail, another line of detail has to be added to clarify it. We agree that we "can" justify talk about the nytimes and the ewg and such, but, as someone else noted in the above section -- why is this simple paragraph getting so long and complicated? Well, I'll tell you.

As we agree, surprisingly, that Stossel made a mistake, what one called "a boner." Fine business! That's one or two lines. Something like "Stossel gave a report... included a statement... statement was an error... Stossel corrected error and apologized." Tell me, what more is there to this story? What are we all missing?

Instead it's being spun into a tale of intrigue and subterfuge and conspiracy. We're being told this by the activists. The simpler explanation is that the error wasn't really that significant. Which it wasn't so far as I can tell and no one has disputed.

So far we have:

  • ABC News executives
  • The 20/20 producer
  • The Environmental Working Group
  • The N Y Times
  • the broadcast schedule
  • E.coli
  • organic farming
  • conventional or "non-organic" farming
  • pesticides, residue
  • bacteria
  • Testing labs and doctor this and doctor that
  • All these actors "question" this or "write" or make "statements" or "discover" or "uncover" things
  • and finally, John Stossel

There's only one problem, this is the biography of John Stossel, it's not the Da Vinci Code of organic farming and all of the various actors and their complaints. Call it "straw men" all you wish, but rather than just call it "straw man," explain to us how this, what all agree was a mistake complicated by a delay in fixing it, requires three paragraphs and all this discussion of what people who aren't John Stossel said or did?SecretaryNotSure 22:04, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Still using the royal "we", I see... Anyway, last I looked, it was only one paragraph, not three, though I would take three paragraphs to explain it if that's what it took. I've already suggested spinning off a John Stossel and his Critics article if the adequate treatment of that subject is seen to unbalance this article. But, suppose someone encountered an accusatory account of this at, say, FAIR, and knowing that FAIR is a biased source and that its statement that Stossel was caught inventing test results might not be accurate then turned to Wikipedia for an NPOV account of this event. I think he should find it here. But a "two liner...[s]omething like 'Stossel gave a report... included a statement... statement was an error... Stossel corrected error and apologized'" doesn't illuminate. (And, again!, you seem to propose omitting that Stossel was reprimanded, and NOT for making an error.) And it's also a magnet for POV modification, so it's impractical as well. Andyvphil 22:40, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Although I'd love to accept your nomination to "the throne" I usually say the article is written by "us." "We" write the wikipedia. I don't write the wikipedia, you don't -- we do. That "we" means me, you, and everyone and anyone reading.SecretaryNotSure 00:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

p.s. What was Stossel reprimanded for? And by whom? We don't know, do we? Its seems to me the reprimand was for the error of not fixing the error in a timely manner.

Next, what is it we're trying to "illuminate?" One man's "illumination" is another man's propaganda. Lets stick to what we know, not what we'd "like to tell people." I.e, if we just tell the story, Stossel made a mistake, but instead, you suggest we "illuminate" the reader that .... what? Fill in the blank there?SecretaryNotSure 00:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

One thing we can illuminate is your error in thinking that "the reprimand was for the error of not fixing the error in a timely manner". If you had read your cites you would know that the who and why you asked for are answered there (and were answered in this article more completely in previous versions): "Shelley Ross, the executive producer of Good Morning America, sent an e-mail to her staff members, warning them to take all complaints about their reports seriously. Mr. Stossel and his producer, the message said, were punished not so much for their mistake, 'but for the arrogance of ignoring complaint letters that followed.'" Stossel was reprimanded not for making the error or for taking too much time to correct it, but for ~"arrogantly"~ not doing enough to check that he had been right. Or, perhaps checking the cites again wouldn't have done you any good. You seem oddly incapable of understanding the necessity of fine distictions. Andyvphil 00:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

First, before I forget, lemme add to the list above:

  • Shelly Ross
  • Good Morning America
  • Staff of Shelly Ross of Good Morning America
  • memo from Shelly Ross to Staff of Good Morning America
  • What this has to do with biography of John Stossel is anyone's guess...

Back to the issue under discussion. Actually, that's exactly what the "reprimand" was for, so far as we know. Not correcting the error fast enough is something measureable, viewable, knowable, whereas "being arrogant" is someone's opinion. Unless someone produces a copy of this "reprimand" and it says "Dear John: You are hereby reprimanded because you are arrogant...." it's just speculation or opinion. But OK, lets just say for sake of saying it that we need to tell the reader "some people think Stossel was arrogant." Fine, now we are up to three sentences:

  1. Error was made
  2. delay in correcting error
  3. error corrected with apology
  4. Some say Stossel is arrogant.

Is there anything else the reader needs to be illuminated about?SecretaryNotSure 02:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

No, the Times article doesn't say "Some say Stossel is arrogant". It says that one of the executives above Stossel wrote that Stossel was reprimanded for being arrogant. No, this is not speculation or opinion, it is uncontroverted fact reported by a RS. If you don't understand the difference by this point it's unlikely I will succeed in explaining it to you. (And, still!, you omit from your four points that Stossel was reprimanded. Incredible.) Andyvphil 03:21, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, if you insist. If we have to include "he was reprimanded" we can't cut out that it was "in a letter" and we can't cut out the fact that it was the producer responsible for the reprimands. But fine. Lets revisit the list:

  1. Error was made
  2. delay in correcting error
  3. ABC chastised Stossel because of the delay.
  4. error corrected with apology
  5. Some say One person says Stossel is arrogant.

Anything else we need to illuminate?SecretaryNotSure 04:35, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

No, we can leave out "in a letter", and we can't say the producer was responsible for [actions or inaction leading to] the reprimands because Stossel was also responsible, and we cannot say ABC chastised Stossel because of the delay because that's not what they chastised him for, and Shelly Ross (who was in a position to know) didn't say he was arrogant but rather that he was reprimanded for having been arrogant. Mostly stuff that his been pointed out to you previously, repeatedly, and to which you have proved impervious. Andyvphil 04:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. You're making a choice of which facts to include based on some rationale. We could draw a table and list the "facts" you suggest we include on the left side and the "facts" you suggest leaving out on the right side. On the include side would be things like "stossel was reprimanded" and "it wasn't the error, it was his arrogance" and on the other side then list the facts you want to leave out, things like the reprimand was minor (in a letter) and the producer was primarily blamed not Stossel, and it was one person who said he was "arrogant" and not ABC. If we make that chart, we see the rationale being used is "if it casts Stossel in a bad light, include it; if it explains Stossels actions or ascribes them to human error, leave that out." That is what we call casting a false light.

You see, something that's libelous doesn't have to consist of falsehoods. Everything listed can be a "true fact" and it can still be libelous if the "true facts" are being "cherry picked" in order to cast a false impression (and other "true facts" that cast a better light are cut out).

I think the above discussion has pretty well established that the current version is libelous.SecretaryNotSure 16:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

You can't even keep your own positions straight. What you said before was, "Those are two different things, being reprimanded and being reprimanded in a letter, the former being much less serious." Now you assert the opposite. Not to mention, I don't recall seeing any source for Stossel being reprimanded in a letter. Ross' letter was not to Stossel. As I said, the main problem is that you keep getting things wrong. Andyvphil 20:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

What "positions" am I supposed to have? Maybe that's the source of misunderstanding, I'm supposed to be neutral.

Regarding your claim that I'm making up this stuff about "the letter" here's what the sources say:

...even though Stossel had already been reprimanded in a letter and Fitzpatrick had been suspended for a month without pay. Stossel escaped suspension himself because he had forwarded mail disputing the segment’s accuracy onto Fitzpatrick for investigation...

OK, what did I get wrong there, it was in a letter, right? In other words, the head guy sent a note that said something like "I think you made a mistake John, you should correct that and be more careful!" Something like that. That's being "reprimanded in a letter." It is not some formal quad-part form with the words "OFFICIAL REPRIMAND" at the top and you keep the canary copy for own records or anything like that. And it's not when he stands at attention in the colonel of ABC's office where he yells "Son, your ego is writting checks your body can't catch...!" Simply saying "he was reprimanded" leaves all that up to the imagination, where the actual "reprimand" was more likely as described.

Actually I notice that while I've been arguing (and notice the word "I" there) other editors have already added the changes I've been arguing for.

At least, most of them. The only little tweak we need to make is we can't say in that rebroadcast Stossel knew it was false and said it anyway. The reader can be confused by saying "EWG notified him" and "he reported the error anyway" -- That might be confusing to someone not familiar with how the news media journalism business works. Because it sounds like "he was notified" when actually, what happened is this group said it was wrong, Stossel checked it out, the producer re-affirmed it, vetted the statement, then he repeated it. That is, Stossels was aware that EWG questioned the statement, and he checked it out and was told that the statement was correct, so he repeated it in the next broadcast. Since a journalist's reputation is so closely related to his honesty, it's probably libelous to imply he knowingly lied, when all the evidence, and the other sources support, that it was a mistake.

By the way, I know the whole story with the rebroadcast, the producer, the EWG what they said, what the producer said and why stossel did this or that is cumbersome and overly long. It would be better to just leave that whole thing out since it doesn't really illuminate anything. However, if the other editors insist we include those details, we can not selectively just report part of the truth (half-truths) and leave out the parts favorable to Stossel. So don't blame me.SecretaryNotSure 05:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Being "neutral" doesn't mean you don't have positions. You wrote "the reprimand was minor (in a letter)" and I pointed out that your previous position was was that a letter was much more serious. Your position had changed.
The McElroy piece on LewRockwell.com, which you rely upon for the assertion that Stossel was reprimanded in a letter[12] is, so far as I can tell, an opinion piece, not an investigatory journalism piece. McElroy is, I think, pulling together material published elsewhere, not generating new material. And sometimes she too gets it wrong. ("This means that Stossel’s claim 'Our tests surprisingly found no pesticide residue [on produce]...' is inaccurate. He should have said 'bacteria residue.'" Absolutely wrong.) The information that Stossel was reprimanded in a letter is unique to her, and is probably a misreading of the NYTimes mention of the Ross letter. She gives a useful contextual overview, but any unique facts she comes up with should be handled with suspicion.
And you've got the reprimand all wrong. It wasn't some offhand note from the boss, asking what was going on. The initial position of ABC news was that they'd investigated and nobody was going to be punished. And a few days later they changed their minds and said the producer would be suspended and Stossel's punishment would be the reprimand.
And as to "other editors have already added the changes I've been arguing for", what on earth do you mean? Nobody has done much on this paragraph other than you and I. Andyvphil 14:27, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

hmm. Just looking over the history list I see over 25 edits by 10 different editors, depending on how we count "when I started arguing."

Regarding the issue at hand, the edits have implemented most of the needed changes. There's still a tilt against Stossel but I don't know if it rises to the level of libelous. So, it depends if our goal is to make an article that is "just over the line" of not being bad enough to get in trouble, or, on the other hand to make an excellent article that tells the story in a neutral way. Those are two different things.

I recognize the problems with relying too heavily on lew rockwell, but I've found them to be more reliable than the other opinion groups like "fair" and "mmfa" because lew rockwell has to be more careful with facts because they are attacked by from all sides if they misstate something. But if the story is going to be built on half-baked comments from those other political groups, there's nothing wrong with including facts uncovered by lew rockwell .

I'm reviewing if there's justification for saying Stossel relied on "his memory" to assure himself that the tests were done before the 2nd broadcast. The sources say he checked with the producer and passed on the concerns and the producer verified that it was correct. That's not simply relying on memory. The phrase implies carelessness by implying Stossel relied on his bad memory instead of checking notes or re-checking with the staff, which is what the sources say he did.

The sources also say ABC could never determine how the error occured. (or if they did, they aren't saying) Obviously they think the producer was careless in some way, and that Stossel should have been more careful in some way. I'm not sure how to phrase that without adding "too much fat."

I'm not sure it's fair to say it was the EWG and no one else. Mentioning the various interest groups make it clearer that the issue was not as clear cut as one group of self professed experts claiming something, when actually the issue was confused by various competing claims and counter-claims and Stossel had to rely on the ABC news staff as his primary source.

I don't know what the issue with the "in a letter" phrase is. It may not be as documented as well as we might like, but in the same way, the fact that he was reprimanded isn't all that well documented either. (also, we are taking at face value nearly all the statements from the interest groups as if they were gospels) Because it's a biography of a living person, we should err on the side of something that doesn't sound as sinister vs. something sounds worse than it may have been, since we really don't have all the papers available.SecretaryNotSure 19:26, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

This has become very pointy. If this one controversy is so important that it needs to be argued and explained in such intricate detail, then it probably warrants its own article forked off from here, with this article having the much shorter description that has been on the page. If not (and I do not think it is) then leave it alone already. The paragraph has multiple sources and is neutrally worded - sprinkling "dubious" all over it, as if this discussion isn't taking place, doesn't help your position, Secretary. (By the way, you may find Lew Rockwell to be a reliable source, but I don't think that most people would describe him as neutral.) Tvoz |talk 20:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Of course it's "pointy" -- it's too long an explanation for a simple event. That's the whole point. So why don't we simplify it, that way we won't have to explain why this detail isn't quite right and this other detail isn't quite right.

You haven't given any reason why you don't think some of the comments are "dubious." You should check out wp:blp.

By the way if you notice I didn't say lew rockwell was neutral I said they are generally reliable. In fact, understanding the difference between something being "true" vs. "neutral" is the whole point of this pointy talk.SecretaryNotSure 03:50, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the Shults attack, I tagged the line regarding Stossel suing and winning a settlement from the WWF as needing a citation (on Sept 30th). I've looked and haven't found anything other than mentions of an "alleged" settlement. That's not confidence-inspiring, if ya know what I mean. I'll remove that line on the 30th if there's no cite to a reliable source by then.Ossified 18:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Did a Google book search and found a couple cites, including one in Stossel's Give Me a Break. Andyvphil 15:09, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Good job! I added the bit about the pain going away since it bears on the previous sentence. Ossified 16:44, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone wrote in one of the changes: Praise - identified politics of each individual cited in the section. We shouldn't do it only for 'liberals', 'progressives', and 'leftists'

Fine. What label do we plan to give the EWG, FAIR,MMFA, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Rachel Carson, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore? I notice Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is called an "environmentalist." Is that a poltical label? Or do only conservatives get a label? Oh, and the libertarians, they get a label too. The other people are all "normal people" and don't need a label.  ???SecretaryNotSure 06:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Citations needed for "tarted up" intro

There is no evidence or cited sources claiming that:

  • All of Stossel's journalism questions commonly or widely held beliefs;
  • He is often critical of government in the same way other consumer reporters are critical of big business;
  • All his reports reflect skepticism of things "everyone knows are true" or conventional wisdom.

Not only are there no sources for these assertions, but they do not appear later in the article. Per WP:LEAD, the introduction is supposed to summarize the article, not exist independently from it. If these "tarted up" statements can not be sourced, then they must be removed per WP:V. 209.77.205.2 18:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, of course. Some of those phrases might be a little too tarted up. I "think" anyone who has studied the life and work of John Stossel would recognize those as basically accurate, but it could be phrased better and with some better sources.SecretaryNotSure 02:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
There's a whole section called "Contrarianism", so I don't know why 209.77.205.2 thinks it doesn't appear later in the article. But I worked on the lead a bit, and duplicated a couple cites from the main text for direct support. Andyvphil 10:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
This bit is a little troubling: "This makes him a "contrarian" in American media and he has been targeted by left wing organizations that disagree with him[citation needed]. However, in his decades as a reporter, Stossel has received numerous honors and awards." First, I'm not sure that being a supporter of free market capitalism is a contrarian view, particularly when you consider who the owners of the media are, e.g., Microsoft, Disney, GE, Rupert Murdoch etc. They're not exactly socialists. Second, I'd like to see evidence that Stossel has actually been targeted before making that assertion. Perhaps some of Stossel's claims have been targeted, but I don't believe that the man himself has. I'll put a 'citation needed' tag on it, but it really should be supported or edited out. Thanks! Ossified 15:33, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
This has a little to do with the article, tangentially, maybe, but your comment about how big media is owned by big corporations made me think of something. You would think that all those big corporations would just embrace the free market ideas -- but no, amazingly this is not the case! You can read more about this at The Business Community's Suicidal Impulse -- according to this an advocate the free market would be a contrarian in "big media". Admittedly this is an opinion, but I think it makes a lot of sense.SecretaryNotSure 03:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I am not fond of the new "tarted up" introduction. It doesn't flow well. I liked it better before the recent changes. However, I think the controversies section is much improved. --JHP 06:02, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Non sequitur

This makes him a "contrarian" in American media

What does this even mean? I want to revise it, but I'm not sure where to go with it. Thought about deleting it, but then the second half of the sentence (which is actually source) makes even less sense. Help! Unschool 01:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

GA Nom

Thoughts on submitting this article for WP:GA... It could use a little cleanup on refs and such but it appears to be a close to a GA just glancing at it. I haven't read through it recently to see if we have any glaring POV issues... thoughts? Should we submit it? Morphh (talk) 14:09, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Did some copyedits and ref fixes. Nominated for GA. :-) Morphh (talk) 2:09, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Passed. Well done. A few very minor tweaks, minor or debatable enough I passed even before they were fixed:
  • Publications sections tells about sales of Give me a Break - how did Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity sell? I'd also give dates he printed each there. I know they're also below, so it's not a big deal, but I think still useful.
  • Palmer R. Chitester Fund ; National Council of Economics Education- could use a wikilink? I know they'd be red, but that's an encouragement for others to write the articles. :-)
  • 20/20 section lists the names of the one-hour specials - were they specifically 20/20 specials? If not, they'd probably be better in a separate section, or moved below to the Contrarianism section that gives more details on one of them already.
  • Awards, praise, and controversies - considering the subsections are named that ... how about changing to Reception? Reaction?
  • The Schults incident - move above Controversies, that was 1984, they start with 1999
  • On December 28, 1984 - On December 28, 1984 to allow date preferences to work
  • Stossel sued and obtained a settlement of $425,000 from the WWF, at which point "the pain slowly went away." - Wow! That reads almost as if it were a direct personal attack ... except that is exactly what he wrote in his book! Want to add "as he wrote in his book" somewhere to that sentence?
  • External links are mostly to articles, which really need author names, and publication dates (retrieved on dates are optional). You've got them on the references, just do the same for the External links. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

John Stossel's full name

Where did John F. Stossel come from? His name is Richard John Stossel. When younger, his nicknames were "Rick-John" and later "Rick".Link2dan (talk) 19:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Can't find much about it... do you have a source? Thanks Morphh (talk) 20:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

wtf john stossel is not encyclopedic —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.122.207.101 (talk) 16:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Who is Max?

Stossel is Jewish. He lives in New York City with his wife and their two children. Max is attending Haverford College near Philadelphia.

Neither before nor after do we learn who Max is. Kidigus (talk) 03:28, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I have removed that statement, as it was unclear and lacking a reliable source.--JayJasper (talk) 19:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Right, ho. Kidigus (talk) 19:40, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

My sources for Stossel's birth name being Richard John Stossel are as follows: I was a friend, colleague at WCBS-TV and summer housemate of his for years and during that period knew directly from him that his name was Richard John Stossel, he wished to be and was called Rick, I saw his Princeton diploma on the wall of his apartment and it read Richard John Stossel, and the friend he moved to New York from Seattle with to work at WCBS-TV called him Rick John. Mutual friends all called him Rick for many years.Link2dan (talk)

Why is the section called "Controversies"?

It is a strange name for this section which seems to be accounts of his journalistic career. If these really are controversies, what is/are the opposing view/views, who holds that view/those views, and why? patsw (talk) 04:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Educational material

Can we mention somewhere in the article that he provides free educational materials for teachers? The organization is based in New York, on Spring St. Gautam Discuss 15:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

For the last time, the criticism section is sorely lacking

Please people, no straw man arguments about FAIR being some kind of totalitarian communist organization or whatever. Here's the thing. Go to the FAIR website. Look at the John Stossel criticisms. We need to be totally clear here. The criticisms ARE NOT saying "We disagree with John Stossel." I WOULD agree, it's not notable if a group just happens to disagree with Stossel. BUT, that is NOT what they're doing. What they ARE doing is giving CLEAR evidence that Stossel is falsifying evidence or otherwise being a very shoddy journalist. In some cases, Stossel even admits and corrects it. Look at the one about the factory wages "rising"! He didn't adjust for inflation? How does "an Emmy winning journalist" not make such an obvious and simple calculation? I am on a high school newspaper staff, and believe me, I'd get my ass kicked out if I did something like that. Now I understand that bios of living people are supposed to slant positively. But there is no way to slant that - and numerous other examples - positively. Either he deliberately manipulated evidence and lied to the public OR he made a very obvious (and very suspicious) error and is guilty of extreme confirmation bias. Please, someone set the record straight here. I'm not very liberal myself and I'm not just disagreeing with Stossel's views. This is not about Stossel being a libertarian. This is about him being either a bad journalist or an inveterate liar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.151.45.242 (talk) 22:35, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not the case that "bios of living people are supposed to slant positively." The rule is, instead, that negative or contentious informatin must be carefully sourced. That leaves plenty of room to make the kind of improvements you're talking about, but you have to do the work of drafting a presentation that addresses the point neutrally, with fair representation of the significant opposing points of view, and provide a supporting citation.
You don't need to make a request like "Please, someone set the record straight here." Just draft something that meets the standards I've mentioned. This situation is common enough that we have a template for it, {{sofixit}} , which prints out as follows: Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). JamesMLane t c 23:11, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Mr./Miss Anonymous Editor, you seem to be using the term "straw man argument" incorrectly. In fact, your very first sentence is a straw man argument, since no one has accused FAIR of being a "totalitarian communist organization". What we have accused FAIR of is not being a reliable source. These faux media watchdog groups—Media Matters and FAIR on the far left, and Accuracy in Media and Media Research Center on the far right—purport to be "media watchdog groups" when in reality they are just arms of left-wing and right-wing political movements, intent on assailing journalism and journalists with which they disagree.

Regarding the factory wages issue, while Stossel was wrong not to adjust for inflation, journalists usually don't adjust for inflation. I'm not excusing Stossel here, but you seem to be suggesting that he somehow violated standard industry practice. All journalists need to do a better job of adjusting for inflation.

Finally, let me just express my personal belief that these criticism and controversy sections that pervade Wikipedia are unencyclopedic. Try reading Britannica or World Book sometime. They never have criticism and controversy sections. Only Wikipedia does. Why? I believe they exist in Wikipedia because they attract editors who either (a) love scandal, or (b) have an agenda they want to push in an encyclopedia. --JHP (talk) 05:58, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

If a media watchdog group, intent on assailing a journalist, merely says, "He's wrong! We disagree! He's a corporate shill! He's part of the liberal media!", then the criticism probably isn't worth mentioning. On the other hand, FAIR and Media Matters generally produce reports that analyze the journalist's work (one or more articles or transcripts or videos), note facts about it, and draw conclusions. Our readers won't always agree with the conclusions but the presentation of the facts and of a notable opinion about them can add to the understanding. Of course, if the target of the criticism has made a response, that should generally be included as well. I speak only of the left-wing watchdogs because I've seen comparatively little of the output of the right-wing groups, and such as I've seen doesn't move me to include them in my comment. Any criticism from any of these sources should be evaluated based on its specific content. As for comparison to the print encyclopedias, they have many fewer articles than we do. Criticism is reported in more detail in Wikipedia for the same reason that many other subjects are reported in more detail in Wikipedia -- we aren't subject to the physical constraints imposed by the dead-tree format. JamesMLane t c 22:08, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
I forgot to mention Encarta which, being a purely digital encyclopedia, is not constrained by the "dead-tree format". Even Britannica is primarily a digital encyclopedia these days. Wikipedia's strength is also its weakness: Anybody can edit it, even kids in high school. I suspect that some Wikipedia editors, when compared to the typical editor, spend a disproportionate amount of their time hanging around the criticism and controversies sections of articles, for reasons (a) and (b) I listed above. --JHP (talk) 02:57, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Well I'm a Wikipedia reader and I spend a lot of time looking at criticism sections. In fact, I find them some of the most useful sections of Wikipedia. For example, I just caught a very suspicious report by Stossel suggesting that global warming is not man-made. I immediately looked him up on Wikipedia to see if this was a one-off or if this journalist has a track-record of questionable reporting. The criticism section is very useful for this purpose. Pexise (talk) 21:39, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Wow, how dare he present another point of view! I guess Climategate will prove all you guys wrong, huh? Then what? The criticism section is TOO long and shows Wikipedia's systematic bias against conservative thought. 64.53.136.29 (talk) 04:23, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Article structure

The controversy section is bordering on NPOV issues with article structure. Consider merging the sections or placing headers (using bold) so that they are not listed in the TOC. Morphh (talk) 13:21, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

100% agreed. It's just another attempt by the left wing admins here to distort the truth. Quite sad and pathetic, really, something you would expect from a second grader. 64.53.136.29 (talk) 16:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Whoops.

I am not a vandal, really. This edit was the result of my attempt to edit from a mobile phone, something new for me this week which I think I shall not do again. (I still can't figure out how that happened.) Unschool 03:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

  1. ^ [http://www.ewg.org/reports/givemeafake "Give Me a Fake: Stossel Under Fire"]. Environmental Working Group. 2000-09-06. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check |url= value (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Rutenberg, Jim (2000-07-31). "Report on Organic Foods Is Challenged". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-09-01. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ Rutenberg, Jim (2000-08-14). "MEDIA; Apology Highlights ABC Reporter's Contrarian Image". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-09-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ McElroy, Wendy (2000-08-15). "Blaspheming Organic Food: The Persecution of John Stossel". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Stossel, John (2000-08-11). "20/20: Stossel Apology for Organic Food Report". ABC News. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1134
  7. ^ Rose, Ted (March 2000) "Laissez-Faire TV: ABC's John Stossel is a man on a mission to teach Americans about the evils of government regulation and the rewards of free enterprise." Brill's Content
  8. ^ Johnson, Gene C., Jr. (2007-08-02). "Price Strikes Back at ABC". Los Angeles Wave. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ Semuels, Alana (2007-07-25). "Preacher sues '20/20,' alleging defamation". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Stossel, John (2007-09-13). "Sick Sob Stories". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ Pierce, Julie (2007-09-14). "Open Letter to ABC's John Stossel ... from Julie Pierce, American SiCKO". Michael Moore. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ Stossel, John (2007-09-25). "Stossel Responds to 'Sicko' Letter". ABC News. Retrieved 2007-09-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ "John Stossel". Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Retrieved 2007-09-24.
  14. ^ "John Stossel". Media Matters for America. Retrieved 2007-09-24.
  15. ^ "John Stossel". Media Transparency. Retrieved 2007-09-24.
  16. ^ http://www.ewg.org/files/tamperingwithtruth_letter.pdf Letter from parents to Mr. Stossel
  17. ^ "Stossel Tampers with the Facts". Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. 2001-07-17. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. ^ Hart, Peter (2007-05). "In Denial on Climate Change". Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Retrieved 2007-09-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. ^ http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1887
  20. ^ "Stossel presented skewed 20/20 segment on "stupid" public schools". Media Matters for America. 2006-01-19. Retrieved 2007-09-26.
  21. ^ http://mediamatters.org/items/200709160003
  22. ^ Spencer, Miranda (May/June 1995) "Desperately Seeking Difference: ABC Finds Biology Is Destiny" Extra! (FAIR)
  23. ^ http://archive.salon.com/media/feature/2000/02/25/stossel/
  24. ^ http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020107/dowie/3
  25. ^ http://www.thegreatboycott.net/John_Stossel.html
  26. ^ http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientprofile.php?recipientID=761
  27. ^ CNN Reliable Sources transcript from the airing of June 30, 2001, 18:30 ET
  28. ^ http://www.ewg.org/node/19634
  29. ^ Stossel, John (2006-07-26). "Smearing Education Choice". Townhall.com. Retrieved 2007-09-24.
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