A blog published by the University of North Carolina School of Journalism reported recently that Steve Cohen of hedge fund SAC Capital managed to kill a story by Reuters reporter Matt Goldstein. It seems that Goldstein was going to shed some light on allegations that Cohen engaged in insider trading. Cohen didn’t like that, and got in touch with Goldstein’s superiors.

It remains unclear how Cohen convinced Goldstein’s superiors to shelve their journalistic ethics, but it is not surprising that he succeeded. After all, Cohen is “the most powerful trader on the Street.” He is also part of a network of closely affiliated hedge fund managers that for many years all but dictated much of what was published by the New York (NYT) financial press.

Three years ago, while working for the Columbia Journalism Review, a magazine affiliated with Columbia University’s school of journalism in New York, I began investigating this network of hedge funds. I worked for many months on this story, and compiled evidence that the hedge fund managers, including Steve Cohen, had developed extremely odd relationships with small number of dishonest journalists.

This evidence gradually convinced me that the  hedge funds and journalists not only routinely worked together to disseminate false information about public companies, but also set out to cover up the serious crime of market manipulation via naked short selling.

As I was preparing to publish this story, a hedge fund called Kingsford Capital donated a large sum of money to the Columbia Journalism Review. Indeed, it was made clear to me that my salary would be paid directly from Kingsford’s donation.

I have made this abundantly clear in various …