DealZone

Jim Chanos has a knack for finding companies and industries that are poised to hit the skids, winning him equal measure of praise and vilification on Wall Street, the standard treatment for big short-sellers. (for further evidence, see also “David Einhorn”).

Most famously, Chanos’ now-$5 billion hedge fund Kynikos Associates shorted Enron before its collapse. But he also won big on other former Wall Street fallen angels like Sunbeam, Conseco, Tyco International and Boston Chicken.

Now Chanos is taking aim at another train wreck: the financial media. In a speech yesterday, Chanos trashed the broadcast and on-line media for breathlessly reporting rumor as legitimate news and called for more regulatory investigations into whose who feed the gullible or nefarious media rabble.

Chanos cited recent travails at a well-known New York investment bank that’s still around (yes, that one) that was the subject of repeated unsourced reports on a certain well-known business television channel (guess). The reports hammered the bank’s share price.

Chanos said he happened to be on his firm’s trading desk on that particular day, right in the thick of trader-land, where rumors are as rife as market positions.

“I run the world’s largest short-selling fund,” Chanos told the SIFMA conference. “We hear everything. That day we didn’t hear any rumors (about the bank).”

“Some of our financial journalists are MAKING the news,” said Chanos. “And blogs are saying things and reporters are reporting it as news.”

Chanos is calling for more government investigations into where journalists are getting phony tips that they foist on the market as news. “There are IM messages, email records, taped phone calls. This is not hard. Inspector Clouseau could do it.”

“A lot of this is just being manufactured to sell stories and get ratings.”

Time to short media stocks?