If you want to get Patrick Byrne's take on naked short selling and the alleged conspiracy (involving class-action lawyers, hedge funds, and journalists) against his company, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK), then Deep Capture, the Movie is a good place to get it.
In the 45th slide of the presentation, to provide evidence of the journalistic conspiracy, Mr. Byrne plays a clip of former New York Post business editor Dan Colarusso speaking to Herb Greenberg, Joe Nocera, and Dave Kansas: "When I think of Patrick Byrne ... We have barrels of ink and stacks of money and all the resources in the world at our disposal, legal and, indeed our media, to crush him."
Is this indicative of a conspiracy? Speaking on Mad Money with Jim Cramer about Mr. Byrne, Herb Greenberg said that "the real conspiracy, if there's a conspiracy, is a conspiracy by these people to silence the critics."
Exactly. And here's a tip for Mr. Byrne: Journalists tend to be big believers in free speech. When you attack their ethics, attempt to intimidate them into silence, and an employee of your company sets up a website to smear them -- that angers journalists, and they jump to each others' defense.
Was there a conspiracy of journalists against Patrick Byrne? I seriously doubt it. But Byrne's efforts to silence his critics have made him an enemy of journalists and lovers of the First Amendment everywhere. Maybe that's the conspiracy.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-19-2007 @ 1:43AM
jim makin said...
Quite frankly when one reads both sides of the issue it is quite obvious that Dan and Herb misuse their media rights.
A little disturbing to here Dan saying "When I think of Patrick Byrne ... We have barrels of ink and stacks of money and all the resources in the world at our disposal, legal and, indeed our media, to crush him."
Amazing how things look when the light shines on both sides of the story.
If finacial media had any credibility why don't they spend some time uncovering the reasons behind stocks spending years on the Reg Sho list.
11-23-2007 @ 11:42AM
Patchie said...
No media conspiracy? Consider that none within the media is even willing to report on an issue the SEC Chairman identified as serious instead relentlessly attacking the messenger.
byrne did not initiate this battle, the media did. Herb Greenberg, Roddy Boyd, Seth Jayson, Carol Remond, Gary Weiss, Floyd Norris, etc....have never once considered the possibilities because each has been speaking the same rhetoric from, nd here it is, the SAME sources. Each one of these reporters will discuss this issue by going to a common and select few short interest sources.
Here is what Harvey Pitt has to say: http://pointers.audiovideoweb.com/stcasx/avwebnjwin9536/nov16/event_clip.wmv/play.asx