Will Stossel Endorse Phony “Lynxgate” Story?
August 2, 2002 According to his e-mail newsletter and a commentary on the ABC website, reporter John Stossel will likely report a bogus account of an important environmental story on ABC’s 20/20 program tonight. In his e-mail preview, Stossel claims that wildlife biologists tried to falsify data in order to show that Canadian lynx, a threatened species, were in southern Washington. “This is a frightening prospect for people who like using the land,” Stossel’s e-mail reports, since “finding a threatened species can set in motion a series of events that can wreck your life if you’re a rancher or farmer or just someone who wants to drive in the woods.” Stossel is enthusiastic about what he thinks happened next: “That didn’t happen this time, because it turned out the government’s biologist were caught cheating! The lynx hair sent to the lab came from a lynx that lives in a cage, miles away from where the biologists claimed they found the hair.” This story, heavily promoted last year by th
