SEC going after e-mails between biz reporters and whistleblowers

Gary Weiss writes on Portfolio.com that the Securities and Exchange Commission wants correspondence between two Dow Jones Newswires reporters and Sam Antar and Barry Minkow, two guys who were once involved in stock frauds but now spend their time trying to expose such shenanigans.

Weiss writes, “What gives this little-known story—here’s the only press coverage—a strange odor is that the SEC wants to know from both Minkow and Antar what they have been saying to the media. The agency has subpoenaed their emails to two reporters for Dow Jones News Service, Michael Rapaport and Ben Dummett, who both have written articles on Interoil. Neither journalist was subpoenaed.”

Later, he notes, “What makes this all even worse than the Einhorn mess is that the SEC is probing the two men’s contacts with those two Dow Jones reporters. That can’t help but have a chilling effect on the ability of the financial press to do its job. The agency has rules strictly limiting subpoenas to the media. Similar rules are needed to keep it from engaging in fishing expeditions aimed at people talking to the press.

“Investigative journalist Chris Byron said a few years ago that journalists are the SEC’s ‘seeing eye dogs.’ The same can be said of the likes of Sam Antar and Barry Minkow. This probe raises the specter of a Securities and Exchange Commission that has, yet again, been led down the garden path, manipulated to waste resources on a wild goose chase aimed at the very people it needs to help police the markets.”

Read more here.