Overstock now after Bloomberg columnist

On Wednesday, Bloomberg columnist Susan Antilla wrote a piece about the smear jobs that online retailer Overstock.com has undertaken against business journalists who criticize its operations.

Forbes.com columnist Gary Weiss notes that the company is now going after Antilla.

On his blog, Weiss wrote that a post from an Overstock employee on an investor web site mentions Antilla’s husband started a hedge fund in 2002 that now invests in media companies.

There’s just one problem. Weiss added, “So there you have it — a media-hedge fund conspiracy! The only problem with this smear is that Antilla and Leibowitz are divorced, a fact that is not only ‘conventional wisdom’ but is also something that Bagley could have easily extracted from the Internet.

“This latest Overstock smear not only illustrates the intimidate-and-lie tactics used by this flailing company, but also again focuses attention on Bagley’s chosen forum for his smears — the Investor Village message board.

“As I pointed out in a post yesterday and previously, IV allows Bagley and Byrne — officers of a public company — to post with impunity on their board,smearing and libeling people by name, in blatant violation of IV’s Terms of Service.”

Read more here.