I know I'm a little behind the times, but I just stumbled upon this Nov. 17 article from Forbes.com, which has not one but two reporters listed in the byline. And yet it's still riddled with inaccuracies about Sharesleuth.com and BailoutSleuth.com, both of which Chris edits. In an article about the highly questionable SEC charges recently brought against Chris' partner Mark Cuban, Forbes.com writes:
He started a Web site, sharesleuth.com, in 2006 and hired a professional journalist to uncover faulty finances at small publicly traded companies. Trouble was, Cuban made no secret of betting against those companies as a short-seller. That, of course, led to criticism that he could manipulate stocks to his advantage using the Web site.
Sigh. I know that only eight people read this blog, but I guess I need all of them to know the following:
- Mark did not start the website and hire Chris. Chris wanted to start a newsletter or organization to uncover stock fraud. He approached Mark with the initial idea and Mark agreed to fund the project, which ultimately became Sharesleuth.com.
- Only some of the companies Sharesleuth.com has investigated are even publicly traded. Thus, Mark doesn't and can't short stocks on many of them.
- In truth, Mark hasn't actually completed a short on any of the stories to date.
- If Mark does make money shorting the stock of a company Sharesleuth.com writes about, he has pledged that money towards financing additional investigations -- not pocketing the profits himself. This is, to my mind, an extremely important detail, one Chris has mentioned to the press again and again -- and yet one which has not been included in any press coverage of the site.
In addition, the Forbes.com article states:
Sharesleuth has since morphed into bailoutsleuth.com, which is tracking the government's bailout of the financial industry.
Again, not true. BailoutSleuth.com is a completely separate site from Sharesleuth.com. Chris edits and writes the majority of the entries for both, but they're separate entities. One did not become the other. Seems like that would be an extremely easy thing to figure out.
Yeah, I know. It's not going to make a difference to whine about it here. I just find it extremely depressing that the media are constantly lazy, picking up on and repeating misconceptions and untruths about my husband's sites just because someone wrote it before. A quick phone call to the source for a little fact-checking and the truth, as they say, would be out there.
And now I'm done. Go on about your day.