Eight years ago, I left network TV behind.
I worried that moving to social media wouldn't work -- that not enough people wanted news alongside cat videos.
I also worried that not enough of you would donate to pay for it.
Unlike most of what you find on Fox News, CNN, etc., we at Stossel TV do weeks of research. Before we post, seven people fact-check, edit and double-check each other's work.
Would enough of you watch and donate to pay for that?
Yes!
This month, my channels reached a billion views. Thank you!
I am often surprised by which videos you choose to watch.
Millions of you watched my long video with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, about how the NSA invades Americans' privacy. All my career, I kept videos short. We thought that's what it took to get people to watch. But Snowden, even at almost two hours, is our most-watched YouTube video.
Our most-watched X videos are about government failures, like former President Joe Biden's promise to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. In three years, the government built seven.
I wish politicians left such things to capitalists.
On Instagram and Rumble, my most-watched video is one that took NYC's government to task for spending $2 million to build a public bathroom in a park.
When I confronted the parks commissioner, pointing out that big houses cost less than his bathroom, he smiled and said "$2 million was a good deal" because the government pays union wages. "It's a good thing."
Our most-watched Facebook video is one in which scientists put common climate change fears into perspective.
Climatologist Patrick Michaels: "It's warmed up around one degree Celsius since 1900, and life expectancy doubled in the industrialized democracies. Yet that temperature ticks up another half a degree, and the entire system crashes? That's the most absurd belief!"
That video got 24 million views before, sadly, Facebook censored it.
That's so wrong.
I began my NYC TV career doing environmental reporting. I won awards exposing filth in city air, in the Hudson River, and pointing out the need for pollution control.
That was then. Now activists fake environmental threats to raise money.
MSNBC: "Climate change could create a massive global food shortage!"
Former President Barack Obama believed that, saying climate change "is already making it more difficult to produce food."
The opposite is true. Food production has increased dramatically.
The zealots claim America's bees are dying off. A "bee-pocalypse," shrieked ABC News.
But the bee population has been going up!
They claim polar bears are disappearing. But there are more polar bears now.
It's good we now have alternatives to so-called mainstream media.
I hate that they cluelessly mock things that make life better, like capitalism.
Not only is it cruel, but "Capitalism is making you lonely," declares Jacobin.
"Capitalism makes us feel empty inside," says Vox.
No wonder 62 percent of young Americans have a "favorable view" of socialism.
That's the main reason I built Stossel TV: to try to teach young people that socialism always fails, while a free market, greedy and crass as it often is, creates prosperity.
I'm now training "Stossel Fellows," young people who will carry on after me.
One I've worked with is Gloria Alvarez of Guatemala. She's become a Latin American influencer, making videos that say: "The thing with socialism is it's like a beautiful iceberg ... the tip, all about brotherhood, free stuff, 'we're all going to get along.' But below sea level is the misery and the genocide and injustice."
By contrast, the free-market iceberg "looks horrible in the tip. It's all about selfishness, greed, individualism and capitalism." Out of sight, below the water, is where "progress and freedom and tolerance and thriving economies actually happen."
Over the past 30 years, those hard-to-see forces lifted a billion people out of extreme poverty.
Most of what makes life better happens because of the market.
I hope to keep reporting on that for another billion views.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Townhall’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Townhall VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member