Petrelis Files

NYT's Friedman: 'I Am a Small Shareholder' of a Cybersecurity Firm

It was a passing financial disclosure and generated curiosity about other info that should be disclosed.

Thomas Friedman opined in his January 11 opinion column for the New York Times, "Online and Scared," that our lives are ruled digitally and everyone needs to be careful about all that we do and share online.

Here's what caught my news watchdog eye:

"Alan S. Cohen, chief commercial officer of the cybersecurity firm Illumio (I am a small shareholder), noted in an interview on siliconAngle.com that the reason this tipping point tipped now was because so many companies, governments, universities, political parties and individuals have concentrated a critical mass of their data in enterprise data centers and cloud computing environments."

Good of Friedman to make this shareholder disclosure and I'd like for him and all regular Times columnists to fully disclose every company in which they are invested. Not only if they're writing about such a company but complete financial disclosures permanently posted on their Times biography page.

Why not have such media transparency? We demand it of our elected leaders. Let's also require it of America's news personalities and pundits.

There is also the matter of how Friedman and his editors define small. Is it ten or 10,000 shares he owns of Illumio? More info, and transparency, very much needed.