Reuters: Please Get Your Shit Together
I don’t know what is more idiotic: This horrific Reuters misquote, or the impossibly idiotic commenting system they have in place.
First, the misquote:
“Turning to the housing market, Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture is predicting the worst in housing is likely over. Sure prices could fall another 33 percent — but it’s unlikely –because homes are now priced where they should be in today’s market, Ritholtz writes.”
The excerpt is not remotely what I have been saying or writing. Even the link they point to explicitly states “My basis for saying the worst is likely over are prices: We are off 33% from the peak, and as of the end of Q1, were ~5-15% over fair value by traditional metrics.”
Whoever wrote this embarrassing excerpt might in the future consider actually reading what the person wrote. You know, the rest of the wordy bits after the headline? THATS where the quotes should come from, versus mis-interpreting the headline.
Normally, I would merely leave a comment — but its been 2 days since I did that, and the Reuters comment have not shown up.
Tweet
Facebook
Reddit
Digg this!
September 18th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Don’t feel bad, BR.
This is symptomatic of the collapse of standards occuring at nearly all major news-gathering and news-content providers, like Reuters and countless others. The hourly-wage clerk who wrote the blurb for Reuters was likely tasked with doing similar for 100′s, maybe 1000′s, of other relevant blog and news posts and stories – just no time to get it done right and hit deadline.
And that’s why Newsweek was sold for a buck. They can’t get it done either.
.
September 18th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
yep sloppy reporting, you would think if they were going to be lazy/sloppy they would have just cut and paste the content.
— at least they put the link the blog post so folks could see the content behind the quote to see the disconnect.
September 18th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Anytime I’ve been near a news story, I generally am bemused at how screwed up the media often got the story.
September 18th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
My experience has been that the vast majority of reporters who cover business and the economy and markets want to get it right. This is just lazy cut & pasting done with little concern for accuracy.
September 18th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Don’t worry about it. A couple of years ago I replied to some Krugman posts at the NYT and they never saw the light of day. Apparently neither can handle the truth or anyone isn’t in knee jerk agreement. Krugman generally sucks by the way, although he is a good writer. Reuters is usually better than AP, but that like saying tombstone pizza is better than Red Barron when both are just almost palatable.
BTW, I just installed a Slingbox Solo and it is seriously impressive technology. One TV is going to the landfill asap. Only criticism … it’s hard to find or even know about the windows player software. (OT, yes, but please indulge me.)
September 18th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
BR: Sorry that happened. Probably happens a lot more lately and due to sloppiness (I would hate to think intentionality):
BTW: Don’t mean to be off-topic …but if you haven’t seen it yet Mike Hirsh has an interesting “food for thought” in Newsweek. Reader above doesn’t think much of Newsweek and I haven’t for years either. But this is an interesting one. I would hope you could comment sometime if you have a chance to read. Seems to touch on some issues you’ve brought up about “economists.”
———
Our Best Minds Are Failing Us
With America in deep trouble, our economists are AWOL, and our scientists are still off ‘financial engineering.’ by Michael HirshSeptember 16, 2010
The most terrifying moment in modern economic history occurred two years ago this month. For several long days after the fall of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15, 2008, the financial system was in danger of total collapse, and the United States seemed on the precipice of another Great Depression in that “Black September.” Just as bad, our economists and senior policymakers had barely any idea why this was happening. The assumptions of an entire era had been proved wrong. The “Great Moderation”—the period of post–Cold War prosperity in which capitalism was said to have been tamed and risk mastered—was revealed to be an illusion. Alan Greenspan professed his “shocked disbelief” that the Wall Street institutions he had trusted in were so reckless as to blow themselves up. “The whole intellectual edifice has collapsed,” the former Fed chairman told Congress that fall. Economists said they would have to come up with new theories for how markets worked, in particular how the financial system functioned and interacted with the “real” economy. “Large swaths of economics are going to have to be rethought on the basis of what happened,” Larry Summers, the presidential adviser who doubles as a world-renowned economist, told me in an interview shortly after Barack Obama took office.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/16/our-best-economic-minds-are-failing-us.html#
September 18th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
You make too much sense BR, they are starting their smear campaign against you. Soon you will have your own security detail.
Any unmarked cars on your street lately?
September 18th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Hey – stop complaining – Oscar Wilde said – “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
September 18th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
JT23456 Says:
September 18th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Hey – stop complaining – Oscar Wilde said – “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
————
Good Point! and this day and age with our “Media” …it rings so TRUE!
I’m glad to see Ritholtz OUT THERE on so many SITES….
Caution Is…we always worry if it will go to “someone’s head” to be invited to so many Parties!
So far …BR’s Head seems SCREWED ON….but then…greater heads have “fallen prey” to flattery and skullduggery.”
We have to wish BR WINGS…to FLY ABOVE.. He’s a Clever Fellow….Let’s hope!
September 18th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
“The medium is the message. ” Professor Marshall McLuhan had it all done in 1964.
You use it; it uses you. For what it is worth, Corporations are solipsists. What they and you need to believe is what they and you massage. The real media , like realpotitik, is what it can afford to project and imprint on the 80% of the population that go with the wind. There needs to be a think involved to buck the wind of madness of crowds.
Don’t wait up for it; no one has gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Just keep on fighting BR; believing you got it won is a sure loser.
“…while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Humans are social animals, more like ants and bees than eagles or owls, pathetic but beautiful when the light hits in a certain way.
September 18th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
@JT23456
Oscar Wilde also said “A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”
Fortunately, bloggers are made of sturdier stuff.
September 18th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
On the other hand, if a reader sees the quote on Reuters, then goes to your blog – they might get vaccinated with healthy skepticism.
And given the emails which get forwarded to me daily – that might be a very good thing.
Skepticism need not make one grouchy…just more robust in truth seeking.
September 19th, 2010 at 12:37 am
This is another example of how the structure of modern electronic media have made censorship unnecessary.
It’s now almost effortless for anyone with a sufficiently bully pulpit to spew out such a shitstorm of disinformation that any subsequent clarification will only be noted by too few to matter.
Once the BS is out there, it can’t be called back. It’s like the notion that the Great Wall of China is “the only man-made structure visible from space.” It’s not true, and the astronaut credited with the observation has denied making it, but it’s persisted for decades.
September 19th, 2010 at 1:08 am
Speaking of subsequent clarifications, I didn’t make my main point clearly above. What I meant is that it’s become far easier to render someone’s voice ineffective by smearing them or misrepresenting their views than by attempting to outright silence them. There’s a fair amount of that directed at the president lately.
September 19th, 2010 at 2:22 am
How many news services do we have nowadays? 2? 3? United Press International, The Associated Press, and Reuters are the three that come to mind. At least those are the 3 that are most often cited in news reports.
At the risk of sounding repetitious;-) about 2 years ago I made mention of a book written in the 1980′s called “The Media Monopoly”, written by Ben Bagdikian. Then there were about 50 corporations which controlled the flow of information. Today it’s down to about 6, plus the “news agencies” (UPI, AP, Reuters).
I want the world to think about a situation in which everything you read, hear and see can be directly influenced by a group of men that would fit in a single limousine. How in this world does that concentration of power fit in a world in which “freedom of the press” is supposed to be the means by which the public informs itself?
Surely the public isn’t aware of this, or else they would take steps to abolish it. (That’s what I tell myself, foolishly thinking that the public actually gives a damn about anything.) But as Fox News has shown time and time again, there are no fools like American fools–they’ll fall for anything…weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nuclear perfidy…pretty soon, Turkish agression…whatever suits the tastes of the owners of the media.
You know folks, all this activity takes place because the US Constitution protects the freedom of the press. I will fight to the death to protect the freedom of the press…as a general propostition, but this isn’t “freedom” at all. it’s the use, no– abuse– really, of the freedoms that we have instituted to protect our basic liberties being used to try to influence public opinion to fit the mold of the people who own the media. This has been going on for at least 30 years and it needs to come to a screeching halt now. The public, if opinion polls are to be believed, have long since soured on the relationship between the public and the press.
We need a much bettor source of information.
September 19th, 2010 at 3:16 am
This is SOP (standard operating procedure) for the media. Accuracy is long gone into a kind of laziness that pervades all of the media.
The only good thing that came about is the rise of internet sites like The Big Picture (there are others) where one can get a more accurate picture of what is really going on without too partisan a skew.
The rise of the big lie and exagerations have become normal. It is now more important than ever to look beyond the large media companies to get any idea of what is going on in our world.
September 19th, 2010 at 8:05 am
“There’s a fair amount of that directed at the president lately”
You can say that again!
We have a president whose policies are serving corporations more than the people, who regularly attends church, and whose parent were a white woman and a black man. Yet in order to hit the 3 main fear buttons in the white tribe; the media is bombarding us with the message of a black muslim forcing socialism upon us.
September 19th, 2010 at 10:13 am
James Hogan:
Hasn’t consolidation been a business policy imperative these last 3 decades? Over here in Aerospace, I remember being appalled when the CEO of Boeing announced that they were a (financial) holding company, not a technology company in some public forum. (I have no idea where to find that quote today)
Am I wrong to suggest that leverage and giant-ism have washed across every industry, with Finance both a victim and a major enabler of the trend? And I’ll further assert that the result everywhere has been the same, ongoing and increasing alienation between management and core competency, until the management itself thwarts the quality of it’s product. Endlessly tweaking the logistics and accountancy chains but never committing to performance on any product or project, management itself crushes their own company down into the dust.
September 19th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Ha ha, Barry. They must have read one of my comments and attributed it to you! but don’t worry, this mistake just corrects your own error! 30% to go!
September 19th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
@TakBak04 :
… BTW: Don’t mean to be off-topic …but if you haven’t seen it yet Mike Hirsh has an interesting “food for thought” in Newsweek. …
—– Reply
Good read, the best take away was in the closing paragraph — (change restoring for reordering below)
Should there not be a new economics that develops fresh concepts reordering the balance between markets and governments, accepting the necessity of both?
September 19th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Ha! I clicked on the link to the Reuters article. Is this the MSM attempt to “blog”? It’s like reading Tweet-ed Cliff Notes. Basically, “there’s no ‘there’ there”.