• Cnet News.com, Friday, August 1, 2008 11:45 AM

Soon-to-be-named Yahoo board member Carl Icahn on Thursday excoriated the news media -- and The Wall Street Journal in particular -- in a series of blog posts, while declaring that he would not attend the Web media giant's annual shareholder meeting in order to avoid a media circus. "The proxy fight is over and it will not do shareholders or Yahoo any good to have the annual meeting turn into a media event for no purpose," Icahn said in one of the postings. He also referred to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock as "gentleman" (after publicly calling for both of their heads during the short-lived proxy fight), and said he hoped that working together would be "the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Per the settlement reached two weeks ago, Icahn will join Yahoo's board, taking the place of the outgoing Robert Kotick. Then, he and the rest of the Yahoo board will select two new members from Icahn's proxy slate, expanding the total number of board seats to 11 members.

As for the Journal, Icahn ripped into the paper's handling of the Microhoo mess. "Are they intimidated by legions of public relations executives who spend shareholder money to defend bad managers and bad management decisions?" Icahn asked. "Are they worried their access to management will dry up if they give too much ink to corporate critics? Are they beholden to the corporate interests of their parent companies, the media conglomerates? Or is it just easier to toe the company line?"

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