Chicago Tribune Corrects Ackman / Lampert Story

After several stories in the MSM and blogs yesterday erroneously said Pershings Bill Ackman flew to Sears Holdings (SHLD) annual meeting to confront Chairman Edward Lampert “because you will not take our calls”, the Tribune issued a correction.

“A story in Tuesday’s business section mischaracterized the reason activist investor William Ackman attended the annual meeting of Sears Holdings Corp. Ackman said he flew to Hoffman Estates from New York to hear Sears Chairman Edward Lampert speak. He had not tried to call Lampert.”

Here is a link to the correction:

This is troubling for the simple reason that the story in the Tribune has fictitious information. Another story in the NY Post reiterated it and one can only come to the conclusion the authors just invented most of it.

What is even worse is the tribune has changed the story online. If you do a Google search for “ackman lampert calls” you get the following results. You’ll notice the Tribune link says “But Ackman traveled thousands of miles to attend the meeting because Lampert wouldn’t take his call, the investor said in an interview after the event…” Yet, that is curiously missing from the story and the correction that has been made is not noted.

The heading “Wouldn’t Take Call” is still there in the actual article, but no mention of what it is talking about. A sloppy whitewash..

It is one things to misquote someone slightly, it is another entirely to invent an conversation…

Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long SHLD