Categories: OLD Media Moves

Coverage of new SEC initiative lacking — with some exceptions

Former BusinessWeek writer Gary WeissÂ writes on his blog Wednesday that coverage of a new Securities and Exchange Commission initiative on short selling has been shallow except for commentators from Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal.

Weiss writes, “Media coverage of SEC chairman Chris Cox’s ‘naked short selling’ publicity stunt has suffered from the usual shortcomings of SEC coverage: naivetÃ©, credulousness, and a tendency to accept pronouncements from our toothless watchdogs at face value. Nothing really terrible, just mediocrity and lack of skepticism.

“There have been, however, some reassuring exceptions over the past couple of days.

“In a commentary today, Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg expertly dissects Cox’s emergency order for the fear-mongering fraud that it is:

“‘Forget naked short sellers. The fellow who isn’t wearing any clothes is Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox,’ he said.

View Comments

Dave says:
July 23, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Chris, great coverage here.
With the multitudes of articles out there addressing this issue you pick up on the one coming from a very visibly biased Gary Weiss. Tell me, how much analysis and research has Weiss engaged in during all this? How much time has he spent investigating heh cause for the rise to $8.4 Billion in aggregate fails to deliver in the system on March 31, 2008 from a mere $3.4 Billion in January 2005 when SHO was initiated?
It is amazing how many former SEC attorney's have now come out and talked about how real this issue is and about how companies get pounded to the ground by the selling and Weiss never identifies any of them. Muriel Siebert, recognized as teh first lady of Wall Street went on Fox Business News and re-iterated how abusive the short sales have been and yet no coverage. Are they all wrong and Gary right?
I would be concerned as to why SABEW provides so much coverage to a clearly biased Mr. Weiss.