2007_02_01_archive

Death of a Great Reporter

Any fan of muckraking journalism knows that one reporter was head and

shoulders above the rest: Molly Ivins, the Texas journalist and former

New York Times reporter. Molly died yesterday of complications from

cancer.

Here is the an obit in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a reminiscence

by a former boss, Mike Blackman. President Bush, to his credit (since

she had skewered the hell out of him) issued a statement paying

tribute to her great wit.

Here's a tribute by John Nichols in The Nation (with a reference to

her famous "gang-pluck" gag that wasn't fit to print in the Times this

morning).

Molly was part of a dying breed. She will be missed.

� 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.

Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on

the book, from my web site.

Labels: Media

posted by Gary Weiss @ 8:46 AM | links to this post

An Overstock Critic Silenced

Sam Antar, a reformed felon who was mastermind of the Crazy Eddie

stock scam, has been performing a real public service lately. He's

donated his time to shareholders of Overstock.com by directing pointed

questions to Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne at the Investor Village

messgae board, which Byrne regularly uses to smear critics and justify

his actions.

It's been a valuable service, not just for investors but for

securities regulators, who I happen to know are following the

cat-and-mouse game between Antar and Byrne very closely. Overstock,

after all, is a very public transgressor of corporate norms -- with

much of that being played out on message boards upon which Byrne

obsessively posts.

As I noted in a post that I updated yesterday, some of Byrne's

admissions, in his comments, have been incredibly damaging.

That valuable dialogue has been squelched, however, by the crackerjack

management team of Investor Village, which has knuckled under to

pressure from Overstock loyalists by squelching Antar. IV has limited

his ability to post on IV, while giving Byrne, Bagley and their

sockpuppets free reign to spread their poison, and repeat the lies and

smears of Overstock's antisocialmedia.net smear site. It's not clear

how much, if at all, Antar will be allowed to post.

IV also censors even mild ridicule of Byrne (such as the message

formerly located here, reprinted here) while allowing the most vicious

cyberstalking.

None of this is a surprise, since it has happened before, with

Overstock critics gagged on flimsy pretexts.

The excuse given by IV, when it silences critics, is not that they

have fallen afoul of some rule, but that they have been subject of

"complaints" for "clogging." In other words, the people who are hyping

Overstock just don't like them. It's interesting to speculate what

motive, aside from stupidity, is behind this curious way of running a

public forum.

I do find it interesting that Antar was silenced within hours after

Byrne expressed annoyance at his questions.

By running an ostensibly neutral message board that restricts posts by

company critics, IV has turned its boards into stock-hyping forums.

That creates a nice set of legal entanglements down the road for IV --

or at least, I certainly hope it does.

UPDATE: As previously, the brilliant management team of IV has been

shamed into a 180 -- until the next critic draws complaints from the

Byrne fan club.

� 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

-----------

Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.

Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on

the book, from my web site.