On this date in 1947, journalist John Frank Stossel was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, to Jewish parents from Germany. He was raised Protestant. He attended Princeton University, earning a degree in psychology in 1969.
He worked as a reporter for several media outlets around the country, then became an editor for “Good Morning America” and in 1981 a correspondent for “20/20.” Stossel moved in 2009 to the Fox Business Channel to host “Stossel,” a weekly program that approaches issues from a libertarian perspective.
He has written three books. Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of Liberal Media (2005) was on The New York Times best-seller list for 11 weeks. His second book was Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel: Why Everything You Know is Wrong (2007), and the third was No, They Can’t: Why Government Fails — But Individuals Succeed (2012).
Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and five awards from the National Press Club. Stossel is married to Ellen Abrams and has two children, who were raised Jewish by his wife. In a “Stossel” episode (Dec. 16, 2010), he identified himself as agnostic. “God may exist, but I want more evidence and I’ve looked for it,” he said, adding that he can’t bring himself to see the bible as “the word of God.”
PHOTO: Stossel in 2018 in Teaneck, N.J.; Gage Skidmore photo. CC 3.0
