Categories: OLD Media Moves

Banks ask court to let it control "hot news"

Attorneys for investment banking firms suing financial news site Theflyonthewall.com argued Friday before the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that they should be able to control when news such as analyst upgrades and downgrades get disseminated.

Larry Neumeister of the Associated Press reports, “The financial companies in 2006 sued the Summit, N.J.-based corporation for copyright infringement and misappropriation, citing Theflyonthewall.com as the most systematic and egregious of the unauthorized redistributors of their reports.

“Rich said the lawsuit was not ‘speech directed’ or an attack on the First Amendment.

“At one point, Judge Reena Raggi asked him why the financial firms were not damaged if CNBC or The New York Times released the same information as Theflyonthewall.com.

“‘Our clients are pragmatic,’ he said. Rich called Theflyonthewall.com a ‘business that focuses on beating our own clients to the punch.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.