Glenn Tilton, the CEO of United Airlines, must be pretty freakin' pissed at everybody from Bloomberg News, Google, Tribune Co.'s Florida Sun-Sentinel, and financial newsletter Income Securities Advisors, which turned a six-year-old news story about the airline's 2002 bankruptcy filing into a current, breaking alert — sending shareholders into fire sale mode and driving down the price of the stock so low and so quickly, NASDAQ froze all trading. So what retribution does United have? Well, they could sue any of those parties. Except they'd probably be laughed out of court. CONTINUED »
Because causing United Airlines stocks to plummet below two cents isn't enough damage done in a day for Google, the search engine has announced plans to begin archiving 244 years worth of newsworthy articles online.
Hilarity ensues when news of a bombing at Pearl Harbor get picked up in The New York Times and jump-starts World War III.
Yesterday we told you about how United Airlines went from a $12 stock for a $0.01 in a single morning, when a reporter from the financial newsletter Income Securities Advisors found a six-year-old story about United's former bankruptcy (it entered protection in 2002, and exited in 2006), treated it like it was breaking news, and posted the item to Bloomberg News, which got picked up by Tribune Co.'s Florida Sun-Sentinel. It turns out, Income Securities was just performing a regular Google News search when it found the item, which was posted to the Sun-Sentinel's list of most-viewed stories, but without a 2002 date. Which means Google News, supposedly powered by a complex algorithm superior to human editing, erroneously pulled the story into its newsfeed and treated it as a brand new article, leading others to believe the story was fresh. Shareholders jumped on the news, selling off United stock, and driving the shareprice down rapidly before trading was frozen. Congrats, Brin & Page.
Bloomberg News does it again: 'Shares of United Airlines lost nearly all their value Monday morning when a false rumor swept financial markets that the struggling carrier had filed for bankruptcy protection. United shares traded at one cent in late morning on the New York Stock Exchange, down 99.92 percent, or $12.29. … The circumstances surrounding the rumor were still being sorted out Monday afternoon. In a statement, United said the rumor occurred when the Web site of The Sun-Sentinel, a Florida newspaper, posted a six-year-old story from The Chicago Tribune archives about United's previous bankruptcy filing. The airline operated under bankruptcy protection from 2002 through 2006. "United has demanded a retraction from The Sun Sentinel and is launching an investigation," the airline said in a statement. On its Web site, however, The Chicago Tribune offered a different set of events. The Tribune said a reporter for Income Securities Advisors, an investment research firm based in Miami, found a Tribune story in the Sun-Sentinel archives during a search for information about bankruptcy situations. The reporter at Income Securities posted the story to Bloomberg News, where the rumor then spread rapidly, The Tribune said.' [NYT]
