AOL Money & Finance

media conspiracy posts

Feed

A media conspiracy against Patrick Byrne?

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.

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA+44.2910,291.26
NASDAQ+15.822,166.90
S&P 500+5.501,098.51

Last updated: November 12, 2009: 12:02 AM

BloggingStocks Exclusives

Hot Stocks

DailyFinance Headlines

Latest from BloggingBuyouts

WalletPop Headlines

AOL Business News

BioHealth Investor Headlines

Sponsored Links

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance