Categories: OLD Media Moves

Hearings on short selling

Today’s hearings on short selling should be interesting for business journalists in the wake of recent allegations that some reporters have been in cahoots with hedge funds and others who short stocks to drive down the price of shares.

Former BusinessWeek reporter Gary Weiss has a couple of nice postings about the hearings and notes that there are a couple of interesting witnesses who have been called to testify. One is a former employee of Gradient Analytics, which is being sued by Overstock.com. If you have been following the issue, Overstock’s leader, Patrick Byrne, has gone toe to toe with business journalists such as Marketwatch’s Herb Greenberg.

Weiss also notes the lack of fact-checking by the Columbia Journalism Review’s Daily blog on the issue. It is recommending readers check out a letter from a witness posted on the SanityCheck.com web site, when a more reputable web site for the letter would be The Wall Street Journal.

Writes Weiss: “Odd, don’t you think, that a journalism review — a site presumably devoted to advocating tough journalism — would link to the financial world’s leading enemy of tough journalism? Particularly since CJR could have linked to the place where ‘sanitycheck’ got the letter — the Wall Street Journal’s website? As you can see, the Aguirre material is available there, at no charge, to subscribers and nonsubscribers alike.”

Read more here.

Recent Posts

Dynamo hires former Business Insider executive editor Harrington

Former Business Insider executive editor Rebecca Harrington has been hired by Dynamo to be its…

23 hours ago

Bloomberg TV hires Kerubo as desk producer

Bloomberg Television has hired Brenda Kerubo as a desk producer in London. She will be covering Europe's…

23 hours ago

Jittery CNBC staff reassured by new boss

In a meeting at CNBC headquarters Thursday afternoon, incoming boss Mark Lazarus presented a bullish…

23 hours ago

Making business news accessible to a wider audience

Ritika Gupta, the BBC's North American business correspondent, was interviewed by Global Woman magazine about…

23 hours ago

Rest of World hires Lo as China reporter

Rest of World has hired Kinling Lo as a China reporter. Lo was previously a…

1 day ago

Bloomberg rises to No. 7 biz news website

Bloomberg News saw strong unique visitor growth to its website in October, passing Fox Business…

1 day ago