Palmer R. Chitester Fund

Erie, PA 16506

The Palmer R. Chitester Fund was created by the combative Bob Chitester, with startup money from the Bradey Foundation, to create right wing "popular" media, and lately has taken to selling educational materials based on the error-prone reporting of ABC TV's arch-conservative correspondent John Stossel. It's Idea Channel distributes "intellectual" videotapes on conversations between mostly members of the right wing movement on topics ranging from political science to economics to history.

A recent (3/2000) story on Salon revealed the following about the fund's relationship to John Stossel & ABC News:

"We are particularly interested in illuminating the prerequisites of a free society -- (with an) emphasis on projects that examine the role of government and explain the interrelationship of economic, personal and political freedom," code for a closeted conservative group."

Maybe the most interesting part of the story revealed a little about the founder and president of the fund, Bob Chitester. According to the reporter, David Mastio, who writes for, among others, the Weekly Standard and Reason,

"Chitester is a combative interview subject, starting each answer with 'You're a liar!' or 'That's not true, you're making it up.' Any questions about the ethics of this deal are 'just made up,' too. he said."

In the end, it may not be ethics that determines the fate of "Stossel in the Classroom." The program has apparently been unpopular with instructors. Chitester said that the student guides are being rewritten in response to negative feedback from the teachers who were using them.

May 20, 2019

FAIR's Stossel Watch page

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=19

May 20, 2014

John Stossel at SourceWatch.org

http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=John_Stossel

American Legislative Exchange Council
December 4, 2000

John Stossel wins ALEC's "Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism"

http://www.alec.org/viewpage.cfm?id=1733

Stossel received a "journalism award" from the movement-subsidized American Legislative Exchange Council

Also see:

American Legislative Exchange Council
American Legislative Exchange Council

Ted Rose
Brill's Content
February 29, 2000

Laissez-Faire TV

reprints/brill_stossel.htm

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

"I think one John Stossel segment taking a skeptical look at government is worth a million dollars to the movement"

--Stephen Moore, director of fiscal policy at the Cato Institute