The measure of character

Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston on his howler:

COLUMN-How I misread News Corp’s taxes: David Cay Johnston

Readers, I apologize. The premise of my debut column for Reuters, on News Corp’s taxes, was wrong, 100 percent dead wrong.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp did not get a $4.8 billion tax refund for the past four years, as I reported. Instead, it paid that much in cash for corporate income taxes for the years 2007 through 2010 while earning pre-tax profits of $10.4 billion.

For the first time in my 45-year-old career I am writing a skinback. That is what journalists call a retraction of the premise of a piece, as in peeling back your skin and feeling the pain. I will do all I can to make sure everyone who has read or heard secondary reports based on my column also learns the facts and would appreciate the help of readers in that cause.

No excuses. But I will explain how I made such a bonehead error. …

and later

The measure of character, I say in my posts and lectures, is whether when an error is found you forthrightly and promptly correct.

Good work unpicking it.

– P