Comments on: How I misread News Corp’s taxes

By: Daniel.Schegh

Daniel.Schegh — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:44:16 +0000

Thank you for the retraction. That shows integrity.

To those claiming ideology blindness, could the same not be said of you, that your evaluation of David’s error is driven by your own ideology?

A better explanation is all of our mistakes are tied to our beliefs. We humans are more thorough in examining things that disagree with our beliefs and more enthusiastic about things that do agree. It’s called confirmation bias and we all have it.

It’s then largely moot to point out a mistake included confirmation bias, a gross exaggeration to expand confirmation bias into “ideology”, wrong to claim the error was *because of* it rather than sloppiness. Confirmation bias and lack of rigor go hand in hand.

It still doesn’t excuse it, but it seems David isn’t looking for an excuse. He retracted, admitted his mistake, and apologized. That’s integrity, especially where so many “news” organizations do none of these.

By: MAbans

MAbans — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:15:03 +0000

I thank you for correcting yourself but sadly Pandora’s box has been open. This will never get the same amount of exposure, that his initial article did because it involved Murdoc not being this evil all seeing entity. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like all the crap that has been coming to light in the Phone Hacking Scandal but journalist have to be careful when putting out their articles because the same people that read that and said “THAT”S BULLSHIT!” aren’t going to believe that. That will believe that the company got to you in some way and come up with all kinds of Illuminati type of conspiracies. Thus the circle of misinformation continues. Doing this, not matter how your apologize, is irresponsible. 45 years in the game? Duke you should know better but glad you still admitted wrong doing, something A LOT of reporters don’t do.. Look at the justification those rag mags use to excuse their phone hacking.

By: bobSmith

bobSmith — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:49:58 +0000

Good job in reporting your mistake and taking full blame for the error. It’s unfortunate that this has to be made a big deal; too many reporters (and “news” organizations) simply would not have bothered, or have done so only in a footnote. You did what you should have done: admitted the error and took full responsibility for the consequences. Kudos for being a real reporter (and a human being, mistakes and all).

By: expat1980

expat1980 — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:21:29 +0000

Heck of a debut there, Dave. Looking forward to reading your next effort. I’m sure it will merit Pulitzer consideration as well.

By: Belgoran

Belgoran — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:05:56 +0000

Kudos for addressing your mistake promptly and correcting it. It’s rare to see people take responsibility without excuses.

By: MikeGayner

MikeGayner — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:50:01 +0000

This error should have been easily noticed by cross-checking with the statement of cash flows. I can’t believe such an egregious error made it onto a published article.

By: GS-CEO

GS-CEO — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:14:11 +0000

PS: The title of the author’s last book I think makes his bias about this type of situation perfectly clear: “Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else”.

Well, I’m sure he viewed News Corp in an entirely neutral light. Is this the kind of reporting we should expect from Reuters?!

By: GS-CEO

GS-CEO — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:10:35 +0000

This seems much more like an attempt at deflecting rather than admitting sheer guilt and culpability for a monumentally stupid error. A first year business school student would get an F on his assignment if he made this error. There is no “why” with a long explanation as to how it was made, as this article attempts to assert. It was simply wrong and boneheaded to assault a legitimate public corporation in such a politically biased manner.

By: Gee-Andy

Gee-Andy — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 06:10:56 +0000

And I would suggest that TinyOne’s ideological bias prevents him from understanding an error based on an assumption, and subsequent admission of that error. Why would a reporter report that a corporation paid taxes in prior years? BECAUSE THAT’S NOT NEWS. (caps borrowed from TinyOne’s post). The mistake, as admitted, is sloppy and regrettable, but can be rationally understood. More than that is purely ideological speculation.

By: RedSteve

RedSteve — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:11:58 +0000

Did you have another tax attorney or CPA look at the accounting sheets and double check your conclusions? This seems like too big of a mistake for someone of your experience and caliber to make, pardon me for saying.

I dislike News Corp. and all Murdoch’s media outlets; however, this article did a grave injustice to his company.

Personally, I think your credibility has been greatly damaged by this article. I know that various blogs still have links to the article up and/or summaries of the article, so the misinformation continues to circulate. (But the links to it from at least one site go to a “page not found” link on Reuters so they may have removed it entirely, which I think is a mistake as well, without guiding readers somewhere where the mistake is explained – such as your above article.)

And I must also ask if Reuters has anything called editors anymore? Did not anyone check the article? Hopefully a lot of folks have learned a lesson from this misinformation.