Warren Buffet Takes on Wall Street Journal

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Archived artilce here for now:

Here is Warren Buffett telling Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that an article based on their `interviewing him "was seriously misleading" and Wall Street Journal responds by saying... (hold on, a bit of a background on this, this will be fun)

First of all, why even mention these events? They occurred over a year ago! - Because I was thinking about the conference that occurred at Harvard last week under the title "Blogging, Journalism & Credibility", a.k.a Webcred which I think seriously missed the point that Jeneane so strongly made and I shall paraphrase here "In Blogging the Editing occurs after Publishing" -- It's like in BigJournalism - Reader is Consumer of News but In Blogging - Reader is Editor of News. Something like that, I am just making this up.

So WSJ responds -- that "In the tight confines of a newspaper article we always have to choose which of an interviewee’s many remarks to report". -- Bada Bing. There! The nice meal portion is set aside for you. It has been edited and ready for your consumption. The News has been carefully tailored to your palate. But not so for Mr. Buffett. He writes back but not on a weblog to stir public discourse and push back on WSJ but in a letter to the Editor asking that the article be corrected. What does the editor do? Well, they publish Buffett's rebuttal, but they have the last word. (more on that later)

This is a fun story. Let's explore this a bit. It shows a couple of things. One, let us ponder journalistic credibility. Is it maybe that Journalism decides what Credibility is by choosing "remarks to report" due to "tight confines of a newspaper article"? - Perhaps. - Two, could it also be that Blogging deals with credibility by first blowing up the fucking tight confines and then letting ALL REMARKS be reported? - Perhaps.

The entire exchange between Mr. Buffett and WSJ is documented on Berkshire's website in PDF files. Here is the story as I see it from dieses dokuments:

The Misquote occurred like this:
Joseph T. Hallinan from WSJ goes to interview Señor Buffett. Hallinan says in Buffet's words "that his taping equipment was not working" so he could not record the interview. The interview goes on without recording. Hallinan then writes an article published in WSJ on August 15th 2003 titled "Buffet Suggests Property Taxes Aren't High Enough in California" (This PDF) -- to paraphrase it goes something like this: Buffet says "I got me a Crib in Kalivornia das worth like $4 Million and I pay like a bit over $2 grand a year in popety taxes. Annnnnndddd - I got me a Crib in Nebrazka that's worth like only $500 thousand, which is 8 times less and I done paid like $14 grand in popety taxes for it. Can you believe this shit. I mean I should pay more taxes in Kalivornia for that huge ass Crib bro". So WSJ says Warren says: "state's property taxes need to be higher".

WSJ story travels around the world, everybody reads Buffet's words and reports."Yea, this dude wants to raise taxes. He is kooky!" Bada Bing! The News is consumed as delivered by WSJ. Riding on the story two days later, on August 18th, 2003 WSJ (This PDF) publishes an Editorial titled "Buffetting California" in which it states about Buffett that "he opined that California's problem may be that it's undertaxed". If you read the entire editorial you will see that it does not discuss Buffett's comments, it only uses the premise that Buffett does not like"Proposition 13, which limits property tax increases" and "The Buffett diagnosis misses entirely that California's main problem is high-tax, high-regulation government". OK, just for the record I want to say that I read the first article (which wasn't entirely about interviewing Buffett by the way) and I will say that nowhere in there does he say anything about that. Fuck, can you believe how hard it is to dig through this PDF shit?

Buffett Responds:

On October 7th, 2003 Buffett writes a letter to WSJ Managing Editor Paul E. Steiger (This PDF) in which he says "your article about me, based on an interview (...) was seriously misleading". So basically something like this "Yeah bro, I do have that Crib you said I do in Kalivornia where I pay $2 grand in taxes but I got another Crib right next door which is worth $2 million (so that's like half of my first Crib) and I paid like $12 grand in taxes so that's like 6 times as much as on the property that's half the value, bro" --- WooooHoooo! Holy Jesus, So this is what he was pointing to about Proposition 13. The reason why the taxes are structured this way is because the $4 mil Crib was purchased in the 1970's and the $2 mil Crib in 1990's and because you can't increase taxes by more than 2% you pay less taxes the longer you own your home. Buffett continues - "there was no mention in the story of my second home (...) nor any mention of tax inequities within California. Instead, the headline, the body of the story and quote made it appear as if I was only talking about the difference in taxes between Omaha and California" --- Sweet Jesus! How fucking hard do you have to work on getting the reporter to report what you said and then write letters to editors to straighten the whole fucking mess?.

"When I subsequently explained (...) just how misleading the story had been, our office received an email from Joe Hallinan suggesting that I "might be interested in doing another interview us, expanding on some earlier points." It is ironic that the reporter mentioned "expanding" my views when he - or his editor - were the ones who had truncated my views in such a misleading and unfair manner" ~ Buffett from Oct 7th, 2003 Letter to Managing Editor of WSJ.

This letter was published in full by WSJ on Nov 3rd yet the final word was not to be Buffett's, it was a the Editor of WSJ who said (This PDF): "I respectfully disagree with Mr. Buffett. The article wasn’t misleading. His central point to our reporter was the huge disparity in taxes on his home in Nebraska vs. those on his properties in California" and then added a very famous line of BigJournalism "In the tight confines of a newspaper article we always have to choose which of an interviewee’s many remarks to report". Fuck your tight confines then!

Buffett's final note was never published but it was posted in a PDF format on Berkshire's website simply saying that

"... my initial point was the comparison of taxes on the two California homes (...) It’s not necessary to raise real estate taxes across the board in California. Simply correcting extreme inequities in the imposition of those taxes would provide much additional revenue for the state. This return to fairness could be done in a manner that protects homeowners with limited incomes, living in homes whose values have soared. Several proposals include such protection" ~ Warren Buffett final note responding to Nov 3rd WSJ article that published his Letter from Oct 7th

My final thoughts: None. Just read the PDF files because all articles pertaining to this are behind Moneywall as Tom said. All links are well hidden and you have to pay to play baby!

I wish I could introduce Mr. Buffett to how blogging adds a twist to exchanging notes with Journalists.

Thank you.

Comments

[severed talking head]

"This is a fun story. Let's explore this a bit. It shows a couple of things. One, let us ponder journalistic credibility. Is it maybe that Journalism decides what Credibility is by choosing "remarks to report" due to "tight confines of a newspaper article"? - Perhaps. - Two, could it also be that Blogging deals with credibility by first blowing up the fucking tight confines and then letting ALL REMARKS be reported? - Perhaps."

This is focking genial, K!! - it clarifies the widely misheld notion that objectivity is a thing, an attribute of certain vetting, or betting, procedures, when "in fact" what it is, merely, is the triumphal assertion that the newspaper (or other media) is more believable because it believes itself to be so. It is credible because it thinks itself to be credible, and surely it would not believe itself if it did not think it was to be believed. Some blogs - not those of the experts, however - turn out to be "more objective" by refusing to play this game.

[Kombinat!]

Ha! I think there is even more than that. At some point Journalims was coopted to be part of Media. There is a distinction. Journalims is about Commitment to Truth as they say, Media is about Commitment to ??? Here I draw a blank, but mostly it's about Circulation, me thinks. Me thinks WallStreetJournal is more interested in Circulation, has more commitment to Circulation than to Journalism. New York Times is a newspaper to be 'Talked About and Read' not necesarily by every peasant in the world, no no that kind of circulation, but by the Target Market Circulation. Hm.... more shit to look at.

[Jon Husband]

I did read this K! ... but thanks for dropping me a comment about it anyway.

[Jon Husband]

And you've just done what I described in laboured, stentorius English phrases in this comment I left on one of JOH's long posts about the Harvard BloJoEthics Conference. You've given readers an alternative view of how what comes to be seen as reality or the truth ... is constructed.

I asked David:

Was there any discussion of the possibility that some form of credibility may come from our having access to an aggregated set of views on a situation ... that offers a reader their own experience of a process of knitting together opinions, links, analyses, questions, verbal frictions ?

We can become (or are becoming ?) the point where takes place the knitting together of sources of information ... we can choose the sources much more easily than even only a few years ago, those sources can be delivered directly to us in a wider range of easier-to-use ways, and we have new tools at our disposal for combing, re-mixing and slicing and dicing the information from those sources in order to assess, compare, analyse, and finally for participating, by writing and commenting ... blogging.

We now have a different way than tv and newspapers for the process of building up our own views and judgments about a situation, and comparing that with what happens and how it happens ... perhaps not different cognition for developing and assessing credibility, but perhaps different paths and logistics for how credibility occurs.
Posted by: Jon Husband on January 23, 2005 10:01 AM

To which he replied

Yes, Jon, that idea came up a few times, It's hugely important, imo.

[severed talking head]

- cross posted from Kombinat! Reads:

At 4:50 PM, Tom Matrullo said...

K!: Circulation is to media what blood is to life. What MSM likes to do is ignore it. Might it have more "credibility" if, instead of pretending that its blood had nothing to do with its spirit, it openly and freely acknowledged that it was in the business of making money by informing and entertaining a subset of its locality whose attributes of education, income and "goodwill" are in fact the precious ring that enables it to attract advertising dollars?

Second: The first thing wrong with the Harvwebblojourcredcon was its hanging its hat on the term "credibility," rather than looking into the matter of how we actually become persuaded that something is true, important, valid, real, etc. I find certain media, certain bloggers, certain critics, quite credible in one matter and entirely incredible in another. Why should we assume credibility is transferable from the instantiation to the actor or speaker?

Jon: You are describing process - this already leaves the benighted hypostatization of "credibility" back where it is most at home, in the Dark Ages.

[Kombinat!]

STH. Thanks. We are moving our con-versashion over there to that new dumping grounds for noise. Yes Yes. Much to say 'bout that.
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