Are biz sources being silenced?

Bill Fleckenstein, who runs a hedge fund in Seattle and writes a column for MSN Money, believes that some hedge fund managers are no longer willing to talk on the record to business journalists because of the recent push by some companies to threaten hedge funds with litigation when they are discussed in a negative light.

Fleckenstein writes, “That’s the chilling part of what Biovail is apparently attempting. As a measure of its “success,” columnists Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times and Herb Greenberg of MarketWatch.com, two friends who do great investigative work, tell me that they both have sources who are no longer willing to go on the record when discussing corporate chicanery.

“What we don’t want to see is the routine silencing of naysayers by managements with something to hide. This is intimidation masquerading as victimization.”

Read the rest of his column here.