John Stossel

20/20 - JOHN STOSSEL   Award-winning news correspondent John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News "20/20." Eight to 10 million people watch his program weekly. Often, he ends "20/20" with a TV column called "Give Me a Break," which challenges conventional wisdom. Stossel's prime-time specials on myths, parenting issues, sex and trends in pop culture rate among the top news programs and have earned him uncommon praise: "The most consistently thought-provoking TV reporter of our time," said The Dallas Morning News. The Orlando Sentinel said he "has the gift for entertaining while saying something profound." Stossel takes this reporting expertise and applies it to his weekly newspaper column for Creators Syndicate. Ready to cover topics newspaper readers care about, Stossel pokes fun at the ridiculous and lauds the excellent. Newspaper editors may wonder whether Stossel's incredible TV ratings will translate from TV to print. The answer to that question is a resounding yes: A few years ago, HarperCollins published Stossel's book Give Me a Break, and readers (the same ones who read newspapers) made it a New York Times bestseller for 11 weeks. His second book from Hyperion, Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity, made the list for 13 weeks. Stossel’s most recent special, Stupid in America, questioned why, despite the failures of socialism, America has a government-monopoly-run K-12 education. Stossel's first special, Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?, examined exaggerated fears of things like chemicals and crime. It was followed by The Blame Game, which looked at Americans' tendency to blame their misfortunes on others. In You Can't Say That! he looked at the battle between free speech and censorship. He focused on bogus lawsuits in The Trouble With Lawyers and bogus scientific claims in Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So. Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. Among his other awards are the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the George Foster Peabody Award. He is a graduate of Princeton University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology.