Classic Joe Nocera

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan:

Mr. Nocera made some serious factual errors in those columns, particularly in the second one, in which he also took Mr. Buffett to task, calling him “cowardly and hypocritical.”

After a complaint from Mr. Buffett, which I was sent a copy of, corrections were appended to the columns, and published in print. […] But there’s a much bigger problem. The entire premise of the second column is built on a mistake: that Mr. Buffett had changed his tone after “licking his wounds” over the reaction to statements he made on April 23, including Mr. Nocera’s criticism. As Mr. Nocera told it in the second column, after several days of this embarrassment passed, Mr. Buffett decided to “bite back” by going on the offensive in a Fortune interview on April 28.

But that “remarkable interview” with Fortune — the so-called biting back — actually took place the same day as the initial statements, not after five days of wound-licking.

Typical Nocera hatchet job.

★ Friday, 9 May 2014