"since i use bloomberg, among other services, for making investment decisions, were any of its reports on this company false or misleading?"
Opinion here ... buttressed from years of analyzing non-financial reporting for bias in my earlier profession:
There is a difference between errors of fact and errors of interpretation (or "spin", "slant", "approach", etc.)
Chances are that most of the true facts (call 'em data points, if you wish) presented by Bloomberg ... and specifically in its reportage by David Evans ... were close enough to accurate as to be unchallengeable.
The bias often occurs in the process of converting data points into a published article. When faced with conflicting data points, a *good* reporter always tries to weigh the strengths and validity of the various data points in order to arrive at his portrayal of the truth.
IMHO, Evans was far less skilled at this process than one would have expected from a (formerly) reputable national news service. His weighting of data points was different from mine. The entire emphasis of his stories was more negative than many of us now believe to have been the truth.
But if you ask Evans, he probably would say, "I was right all along. The company *was* running out of cash. It *was* doing desperate-appearing things. The stock *did* tank. And the CEO *was* a jackass."
His motivation? I dunno. Could be that he wanted to be the guy that exposed crookedness within a company. Look at the fame and notoriety which came with the Cendant exposures. Could be that he just dislikes capitalism. Could be that this became a personal vendetta for him (in which case an editor should have stepped in). Could be that, unknown to us, he was under intense pressure from his bosses to "produce" or to get out, so he picked ABTX.
But in the long run, you or I would be hard pressed to prove Evans wrong enough in a court of law to prevail ... in anything.
But I have very little respect for him as a gatherer and arranger of data points. As a reporter, he did not IMHO seek a balance which presented the true situation.
I, for one, will not take a Bloomberg article as representing "the truth" ever again.
JSb. |
