This just in: Things are looking up financially at the New York Times. In coverage of the media corporation’s quarterly earnings report, Reuters had this to say:
The New York Times Co (NYT.N) pleased investors with market-beating profit and revenue as digital subscriptions surged, underscoring the turnaround in its fortunes that had wavered as fewer people bought newspapers.
Keep in mind that phrase “market-beating profit,” because later in the piece–almost at the end–it says,
The company posted a net loss of $57.8 million, compared with a year-ago profit of $37.6 million, mostly due to higher costs and pension settlements.
So where, exactly, was that “market-beating profit”? It turns out that if you exclude those “higher costs and pension settlements,” then the Times did pretty well. Of course those higher costs are a price of them doing business and pension settlements, while perhaps not a recurring expense, did actually count for something. It would be sort of like me bragging about how great my budget look, excluding my increased mortgage and the cost of my European vacation.
And the “market-beating” aspect of the company’s numbers simply referred to them coming in better than the experts had predicted. Things might be looking up for the Grey Lady, but they’re not nearly so rosy as this article would suggest.
Why would this Reuters article be so misleading? While it’s possible that the reporter just wasn’t up to the task, I rather doubt that. Instead, my theory is that this journalist, loyal to the professional, really wants the New York Times to be doing well. When you really want something to be true, you’re more apt to find evidence of it.
Not all “fake news” is malicious, but it can all lead us to incorrect conclusions. We have to read carefully, lest we be fooled by a headline.