Bartley-Friedman Award

If I had money, I'd forget the Mercury and I would endow a "Robert Bartley-Milton Friedman Award," complete with a generous stipend. The award would be for those rare journalists whose reporting includes good economics.

The award would go to ABC's John Stossel for his work on 20/20. This is primetime, broadcast TV, not a right wing blog or cable show -- and Stossel frequently airs courageous stories. His New Year reprisal of myths is a good example: no, we're not drowning in trash, choking on chemicals, and dying of overpopulation.

But last night’s "Stupid in America" was the bravest, most honest, and most courageous thing I have seen on TV. Stossel suggests (Friedman-style) that revenue should follow the student and not the schools. He blasts government monopoly, sclerotic teachers; unions, and complacency for their parts in preserving this abysmal status quo.

I think that ThreeSources readers have heard all the arguments, but this was packaged up in a moving broadcast with video of children who won -- and lost -- a lottery to get a good education in a charter school.

Stossel doesn't join me in going back to John Quincy Adams, but he does ask us to go back to our youth and remember how things have improved with free-market competition: how the telecom industry blossomed when it was deregulated.

This show is a work of art. I will post if it is rerun, and if any of you would like it, I can make a DVD off my PVR. It's an outstanding program.

UPDATE: Stossel also compares US students’ achievement to Belgian students (hint: ours don't win) It reminded me of Michael Barone's "Hard America Soft America" The Belgians are given an outstanding and rigorous education for a dead-end life in a sclerotic socialist society; their American counterparts are given a substandard education and then thrown into a dynamic, opportunity-driven work culture. The Belgians seem to have Barone upside-down...

Media and Blogging Posted by jk at January 14, 2006 7:13 PM