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. With “Bizarre and ill-advised”
Posted Under: Ethics
It will be interesting to see how this plays out: The WSJ has a story this morning about the fact that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey used to be a regular on Yahoo’s stock boards, talking up his own company, and trashing competitor Wild Oats, all under a fake name — “rahodeb.” Kind of like Lee Siegel. He didn’t do this two or three times, he did it for seven or eight years. One amusing example has Mackey writing, under a pseudonym: “While I’m not a ‘Mackey groupie,’ I do admire what the man has accomplished.”
Sheesh.
The Journal story is inconclusive on the legal implications. I go along with a securities law expert quoted saying that, “at a minimum, it’s bizarre and ill-advised.”
So what will happen? Even if there’s no illegality, I can imagine a negative-publicity feeding frenzy that causes Mackey serious problems.
I can also imagine that people will shrug it off because he generally seems to be a good CEO with impressive values, and this whole incident has only come to light by way of the FTC’s not-very-convincing argument that Whole Foods should be blocked from buying Wild Oats.
Although I’ve never reported on Whole Foods, I think all in all it’s a compelling company, and Mackey is a compelling CEO. But he was spectacularly stupid to do this. There’s just no reason for it, and reading that he was hyping is own stock, calling Wild Oats a “bad company,” etc. … that’s just gross. Plus his response to the whole thing on the company site isn’t very impressive. (Example: “I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me,” he writes. Uh, no shit. That’s part of the problem.)
I guess we’ll wait and see what happens next.
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Reader Comments
Actually, not like me at all. You have your own narrative, it seems, so this probably won’t convince you, but I was using anonymity to protest the Internet convention of libelous anonymity. I really didn’t think I needed to protect my image on an obscure thread, inhabited by some real loons, that practically no one read. I’m an established writer, for heaven’s sake. I just didn’t like anonymous commenters saying things like “Siegel wanted to fuck a child.” (Do you publish comments like that? Or plain insults? Bet you don’t.) You’re not going to like the way I put this, but it was a question of journalistic ethics, in a situation where no one was enforcing them. It was, you should pardon the expression, the principle of the thing.
I also only did it a five or six times. FYI
It’s a fair point, the five or six times vs. seven or eight years of it, and there’s another dimension involved when he’s talking about his own public company.
I do publish insults directed at me, but you’re right that I wouldn’t post a profane, anonymous, insult comment, certainly nothing like that example. You’re also right that the apparent new-media tradition of anonymous trash talk is not a good thing. I dealt with more of it when I wrote for Slate, and here is my highlight reel:
http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=898
Nothing as bad as your example, but still. It never struck me as a good idea to wade into it. But maybe in my case — unlike you or Mackey — the very notion of a third-party defender/fan is so transparently remote I simply sensed I’d be outed instantly.
Last note on this: To my surprise, I haven’t heard/seen much criticism of Mackey for this, maybe people are only interested in when journalists and critics and writers do it?
Thanks for the comment…