RTTNEWS deserves public spanking: market news agency quick to hit send instead sends people in a panic
I was browsing through todays news from news.google.com, when I stumbled upon a story saying that Juniper Networks stock falls on CEO leaving; this is obviously not the case; the COO (Stephen Elop) has taken a job at Microsoft as the new business division leader. News agencies like RTTNEWS which in this article clearly wanted to get the news out quickly instead of accurately. A public spanking is deserved for RTTNEWS.
Take a look at the following recent errors that RTTNEWS has issued as market alerts.
- On Jan 8 2008, RTTNEWS issued a headline and then a correction to a previous story about the CFO leaving Force Protection. This is then updated as the CEO.
- On Dec 31, 2007 RTTNEWS issues information about Ninetowns Internet Technology, and indicates that revenues for a current qtr are US $.1 million instead of $3.1 million. A correction follows.
These “market alerts” with incorrect information can and do cause significant concern and the slight difference in detail can mean a lot to market watchers. For example, the departure of a COO in a company that has been with the company for less than 3 years versus a CEO that build the company, can have staggering different sentiment to the investment community.
Taking a bit of time to ensure the information is correct is far more valuable than being the first one to issue a story. At least it means more to me; because the more invalid information that I receive from a news source the more likely that source is to be blocked from my RSS feed. (ie. the same way Fox news has become the blocked from my reader).
Originally published on truman.net. See the archived copy.