I think this reporter needs to get fired or severely reprimanded over this screw-up.
At 10:53 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time Monday, a reporter at a Florida-based investor information service did a routine Google search and found a story saying United Airlines was declaring bankruptcy.
It seemed credible: It was from the Chicago Tribune and it was posted on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a sister paper also owned by Tribune. United Airlines parent company UAL (nasdaq: UAUA - news - people ), based in Chicago, has a long history of troubled finances.
He didn't call the company, but he did write up a headline, "United Airlines: Files for Ch. 11, to cut costs by 20%" and published it, not only to subscribers of the Income Securities Advisor, but also through Bloomberg terminals, to which ISA, in the parlance of the Internet news industry, aggregates its content.
Why the hell did he not call the company when there was a news story saying that the company declared bankruptcy out of nowhere like that. All he had to do was pick up the phone and talk to someone from UALs corporate communications office and the stock would not have gone to 3 like that. Good thing I didn't have a stop on it or I would have been stopped out at a crappy price due to this person's incompetence.
All this reporter had to do was call UAL and say "This is ISA verifying a story from the S. Florida Sun Sentinel that you folks have declared Chapter 11." Then UAL would have said "Nope we didn't send out any information like. That Sun Sentinel article is a mistake." And that would have been that.
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