In 1999 Calandra said. ``We have 53 full-time journalists; 49 of them said they did not want to be excluded from the stock and bond markets"
Dang we been here before
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sfgate.com
Ethical Journalism in a Market-Mad World
Also, Salon getting too big for its britches, moving into new offices
Dan Fost Thursday, September 16, 1999
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Media ethicists increasingly are posing a question: Can journalists covering the stock market also trade stocks?
MarketWatch.com Editor in Chief Thom Calandra poses a different question: Can he fairly tell his reporters that they should give readers information about stocks but not use any of that information to trade themselves?
The answer lies in the new MarketWatch stock ownership policy, posted on the company Web site at cbs.marketwatch.com/news/edpolicy.htx?source=htx/http2mw. (You also can find it from the main page at cbs.marketwatch.com by clicking on Site Map at the top of the page and then clicking on Editorial Policy under the About Us heading.)
The policy is harder to find than that of rival TheStreet.com, which links its policy at the end of every story. And it's not nearly as stringent: TheStreet prohibits reporters from owning stocks, except through mutual funds and except in TheStreet itself. (That doesn't go for columnists, however, such as co-founder James Cramer, a walking conflict-of-interest case who writes about everything, including firms in his hedge fund's portfolio, and then discloses everything.)
The expanded MarketWatch policy prohibits newsroom staffers from trading securities of companies they regularly cover. If they write about another company, they can't trade that stock until 48 hours after their story is published. If they own stock in a company and are assigned to write the story anyway, their interest will be disclosed on the site.
``We have 53 full-time journalists; 49 of them said they did not want to be excluded from the stock and bond markets,'' Calandra said.
Calandra reviewed proposals with his newest columnist, Marshall Loeb, the former editor of Columbia Journalism Review, and picked the two-day ban even though they figured that ``makes no sense,'' he said.
``I mean, our journalists are not trading on news that they are withholding, are they? Why should we trust their judgment when it comes to the delivery of news, then devise some policy that in effect says, `If you trade before 72 hours, or three weeks, or three months, you're in deep doo-doo.' Our editorial trading policies, which have worked very well for three years now, are to guide our writers and editors, not penalize them or straitjacket them.
``They're a fine bunch of folks with the highest standards, and that's the way they get treated.'' |
