Media fueling Wall Street corruption, CEO claims

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne believes that the business media is contributing to corruption in the stock markets, according to a speech he gave earlier this week at the University of Utah.

Wendy Leonard of the Deseret Morning News wrote, “Byrne criticized various local and national media depictions of financial and education-related news, saying no media outlet has either the integrity or know-how to investigate such a crime. He feels he has been ‘demonized’ by mainstream press accusations while ‘the statistics could tell the story on their own.’

“‘The institutions that mediate our social discourse have been captured by powerful private interests,’ he said, adding his claim that ‘hedge funds manipulate the financial press.’

“The dot-com business, Byrne said, has been the overrun by a small group of broker-dealers and hedge-fund operators. That corruption has been protected by a small group of journalists ‘who don’t understand what they’re doing,’ he said.

“Former Columbia Journalism Review employee Mark Mitchell said he is close to releasing an article detailing a similarly corrupt media presence in what he calls the ‘single biggest scandal in American journalism.’ He said the crooks on Wall Street are real, and that they pose a complex problem, not only for the struggling businesses they are taking down, but for all of America.”

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