Cox on Phony Journalists

SEC chairman Chris Cox, quoted by Reuters tonight, says that the agency is working on subpoena guidelines for journalists. He then makes the following pointed observation:

He said the commissioners had discussed the problem of defining who is and is not truly a journalist. "There are people masquerading as journalists who really aren't. That's a concern," he said. He said the guidelines would concern only the news media and no one else.

This is indeed a concern. The "sanitycheck" website, promoted by Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne on CNBC yesterday, bills itself as an "independent" website that likes to say that it engages in "journalism." But if you follow Byrne's advice and go there, you see that it is run anonymously by an individual who hides behind a phony name while he promotes several companies, Overstock among them. One of its primary functions is to slander and intimidate journalists who fall afoul of those companies.

That's not "journalism" by any stretch of the imagination. Time for the SEC to take action against this fraudulent website and its scummy operators and hidden backers.

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