Inaugurating a workshop on 'Capital Market for Financial Journalists' as part of a nationwide campaign, SEBI chairman M Damodaran listed out a number of instances of wrong reporting including his purported meeting with Finance Minister P Chidambaram on volatility of stock markets at a time when latter was not even in India.
"Whose purpose such so called scoops are serving," he wondered and said such reports definitely had a "design" intended to serve somebody's purpose. Asking scribes to play a 'responsible' role for the development of markets and investors' base, he said many a times when a price sensitive 'scoop' comes into media a routine denial is issued by the company after trading hours.
"But in the meanwhile somebody would have made the money," Damodaran cautioned and said that at times journalists, due to highly competitive nature of their jobs, become easy prey to such elements in spreading price sensitive "information or disinformation."
Referring to the Supreme Court order on admitting SEBI's petition challenging appellate tribunal SAT's decision to lift ban on foreign institutional investor, UBS in connection with May 2004 stock market crash, he said still a paper reported that regulator's plea had been rejected.
The apex court while admitting the appeal had declined to stay the SAT ruling.