Reuters kills hedge fund story after pressure
TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE
Reuters editors last week killed a story by investigative reporter Matthew Goldstein about hedge fund trader Steven Cohen after Cohen complained to top Thomson Reuters executives that he was being persecuted by the news agency’s reporting, sources at Reuters said.
Goldstein’s story was an “incremental” advance in the reports swirling around Cohen that he engaged in insider trading during the 1980s, Reuters sources said. There have been reports that Cohen is next in the sights of the SEC following the Galleon case, which featured SEC wiretapping the conversations of hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.
Goldstein’s story was based on documents, and was approved by Reuters lawyers. After Goldstein contacted Cohen for the pro forma no comment before the story ran, Cohen repeatedly called Devin Wenig, CEO of the Thomson Reuters markets division and the No. 2 executive at Thomson Reuters, to complain about the story.
Wenig passed on the complaints to Reuters Editor in Chief David Schlesinger, who asked editors to look into them. Reuters editors debated the story for three days before finally killing it.
A Reuters spokeswoman, when contacted by Talking Biz News, commented, “We make decisions on whether or not to run stories purely on journalistic grounds.”
The decision has hit morale at the news agency, where reporters had been encouraged by the formation of an enterprise team in recent months, the hiring of a former New York Times Sunday business editor Jim Impoco to head that effort, and Goldstein moving over from a columnist position to investigative reporting. Talking Biz News wrote about these efforts earlier this year.
The enterprise team also was allowing Reuters reporters to write longer analytical pieces which had been anathema at the news agency for years. In its first few months, the team had coordinated several hard-hitting pieces including one questioning the investment decisions of giant California pension fund Calpers, and a piece about China that caught the eye of the White House and led to an interview with President Obama.
“If Reuters wants to have credibility in enterprise reporting, its editors need to stand by reporters and resist pressure from people like Cohen,” said one Reuters insider.
Information services agency that caters to business clients expands into reporting, and then caves into unhappy business customers who complain that the stories aren’t nicey-nicey– sadly, this isn’t news. Trade editors deal with it all the time.
I’m not involved in this, but hang on just a second, Joey. Reuters hasn’t expanded into reporting. It’s been there for more than 150 years.
If Reuters backed down on this you really have to wonder how many other times Cohen has called media outlets and dictated their reportings? I think that Patrick Byrne called this sock puppetry where hedge funds ran the show under the byline of another.
SABEW and financial journalists everywhere should be angered by this as such a story cuts into the very reputation of your profession. It smells of pay to play with the appearance of a crook calling the shots here.
Robert, I believe Joey was referring to Thomson, not Reuters.
Who is more pathetic here: Stevie Cohen crying about how he is being “persecutedâ€, or Devin Wenig and David Schlesinger spinelessly caving in? How these men live with their cowardice escapes me.
Matt Goldstein is an awesome reporter. He should be backed to the wall.
When people start to realize how common this is in the financial media they are going to be shocked.
Investigative media outlet deepcapture.com does a good job of explaing it from what I have read.
It’s a small step to cave into pressure about publishing an article about the fund to publishing articles about equities the fund is short or long. This is one initial step toward collusion.
“If Reuters wants to have credibility in enterprise reporting, its editors need to stand by reporters and resist pressure from people like Cohen,†said one Reuters insider.
WHAT HE/SHE SAID…
Reuters behaviour in this instance is deplorable. Goldstein is one of the most talented and respected financial journalists in the U.S.
What happened to free press?
Just so that deepcapture post above doesn’t go unanswered: Deep Capture is a conspiracy site on a par with the craziest moon-landings deniers. It’s owned by Patrick Byrne, the psychotic CEO of Overstock.com, and run by his odious toady, Judd Bagley. What they say can and should be discounted out of hand. Especially now that they are much closer than ever to facing indictment, or at least hefty civil penalties, thanks to their recent criminal activities.
I’ve worked in business media for about 15 years, and have never been witness to anything like this Reuters mess, much less been a victim of it.
Also, you can see how incompetent Bagley is at his sockpuppetry by the clumsy way he tried to portray himself here as a mere reader of Deep Capture. “…from what I have read.” Yeesh.
How is it that everyone is missing the fact that Rubin and his 15 disciples were the ones who committed the most deep and damaging crimes. First of all it was convincing the SEC to increase the leverage ratio from 12:1 to 30:1 – just when the quality of mortgage pools were deteriorating. GS bought a huge amount of CDS protection from AIG – isnt it amazing that the Feds somehow became convinced that Lehman and Bear Sterns could fail – but AIG could not??? Did they disclose that if AIG went under then GS would really be in trouble.
Doesnt anyone realize that all of the big banks have contacts in the DOJ, SEC, CFTC and all other regulatory organizations. Do you think they are pushing the focus to the buyside organizations to take the focus on themselves.
If the buysiders crossed the grey insider trading line then they need to be held accountable – but i will point out that these firms made money without leverage and it was the sell-siders who literally walked into the Fed Reserve Bank and robbed billions of dollars from taxpayers.
If you cant see this – then youre missing whats really happening.
It’s common practice that magazine and other kind of media write favourable pieces for their advertising clients.
Why should this be different in finance?
Byrne’s theory that some hedge funds rigged the game by ‘influencing’ journalists, analysts, law firms and SEC officials especially in small and microcaps to reap rewards in shorts or derivatives seems very plausible to me and they give a lot of supporting information on the deepcapture site in my opinion.
It’s time that the responsible government agencies level the investing field by finally going after these cases.
steve cohen has always attempted to hide his activities. Hardly surprising. Every street criminal always attempts to hide their activities. Sad state of affairs when anyone with enough “juice” can silence a supposed free press. Nothing that is not common though. reuters has demonstrated that they are less than worthy of the mantle of “media”. Scratch any credibility they had.
Whatever Reuters’ reason for killing the story, “journalistic grounds” is almost definitely not it. A story that already has been successfully lawyered does not just suddenly get killed on “journalistic grounds.”
Relative to marketguru@13, GS is only here today because it got covered by AIG at 100 cents on the dollar, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayers. Comparable figures for similarly situated entities not named Goldman Sachs were on the order of 10 to 13 cents on the dollar. We need a big-ass clawback for the taxpayers — right now, before AIG or GS execs get one more thin dime of compensation. And if GS/AIG shareholders/bondholders have to take a severe haircut for that to happen, well, maybe I’ll send flowers.
It is just insane and very, very wrong to hire a great investigative reporter like Matt and then muzzle him.
If you think Patrick Byrnes is a madman, consider that he just won a $5 million dollar settlement against hedge scum John Rocker.
Patrick is an educated and moral person who has shone a light on hedgefund bullcrap.
Deepcapture.com rules.
The SEC will be charged with treason and RICO crimes.
Jim, your keyboard to God’s ear.
Please leave Mr. Cohen alone, he does wonders for society, pays a boatload of taxes, and employs a lot of individuals
Yeah. Right. But from my point of view, journalism is not to write false statements. It is write the truth.