Fourth of July fireworks on the Internet

Weird goings on over at the blog run by financial journalist Gary Weiss, the author of Wall Street vs. America, where Gary and Mark Mitchell, the assistant managing editor of Columbia Journalism Review Daily, have been trying to knock each other down for the past few days and have continued today with several postings about business journalism.

The cat fight is worthy of Star Jones vs. Barbara Walters.

To give some background, this all started last week when Weiss criticized the CJR Daily for its analysis of a Wall Street Journal article on Warren Buffett giving away billions to Bill Gates’ foundation.

Mitchell responded by posting comments on the Weiss blog, first anonymously and then under his own name. After he was exposed for posting anonymously, Mitchell wrote, “I doubt that CJR has rules about anonymous posting, and if it does, I plan to ignore them. I see no harm in a writer using a pseudonym–assuming he is prepared to take responsibility for his commentary.” Weiss, a former BusinessWeek investigative reporter, has questioned this action by Mitchell.

If you’re following along at home, what Mitchell is saying is that he plans to do what cost Los Angeles Times’ business columnist Michael Hiltzik his blog and then later his column when the paper discovered he was posting anonymous comments on other blogs that were critical of him.

Today, Mitchell posts this defense: “I do not understand what is ‘naïve’ about stating that there is something quite wrong with shallow stories that provide no information relevant to business outcomes or the greater good. Why is it ‘unfamiliar’ to question the value of stories that do serious damage to the reputations of corporations and people, and yet consistently fail to present complete sets of facts? What is the problem with noting that it is a bit absurd to say that the future of Berkshire, or its stock, is clouded for the sole reason that Warren Buffet contributed shares to charity? Might Berkshire’s business model, and stuff like how much money it makes, also affect its future? One need only browse the blogs and message boards to see the influence that these stories are having on the public debate, and it is not good.”

Mitchell, by the way, is a veteran of the Wall Street Journal in Brussels, Time magazine in Hong Kong and Bangkok and the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong, so he does have qualifications to comment about business journalism.

Weiss has now responded, “What’s naïve about that statement is that not every article in a newspaper has the purpose of advancing Mark Mitchell’s view of the greater good. It shows a lack of understanding of the news business that I find pretty shocking in a ‘media critic.’

“But your comments here, while sometimes bizarre in my opinion, are not what concerns me. What I find troubling is that your staff wrote a flawed, erroneous article, and you — the AME in charge of the section — responded not by admitting that you screwed up, but by posting an anonymous attack on the Journal. Your further responses, under your real name, probably did your credibility even more damage, as did your saying ‘if CJR has rules on anonynmous posting, I plan to ignore them.'”

Read more here. After going to this link, then click on comments at the bottom. Quite a cat fight going on about business journalism.