The Truth Of The Lies

Holman Jenkins writes in the Opinion Journal about two stories that the New York Times peddled recently that raise grave questions about exactly how truthful the Paper of Record(ed Democratic talking points) actually is in the field of business. The short answer: why just as credible as it is in all things political these days. That is to say, it is not.

Here's an incident that made me wonder about the New York Times.

Under the headline "The Boss Actually Said This: Pay Me Less," a lead story appeared in the business section a year ago lauding a CEO who turned down an offer of stock options. "After hearing the amount from my boss," the executive wrote in a letter to his board, recalling a sizeable bonus at an earlier job, "I immediately called my father with the news. The first words out of his mouth were 'don't ever feel that you are worth it.' I don't want him to say that to me again."

Now it happens that a well-meaning source had first shopped this story to me. Though the letter had some good ideas about compensation, the personal note struck me as regrettable, an impression only strengthened by lunch with the CEO, who seemed anguished that his income was bigger than his children's nanny's. Moreover, the company is privately held; the CEO is a founder with a big equity stake that will lead to a lucrative payday if the firm goes public or is sold. Stock options just don't have the same significance that they do in a public company where boards are effectively transferring wealth from public shareholders to the CEO.

I waved the story off–knowing the source's next stop was the Times–for another reason: The "father" not named or described in the letter was, in fact, a long-serving board member of Tyco, from 1967 to 2002, who mentored Dennis Kozlowski and was dragged through the legal mud in Kozlowski's downfall. Anyone in-the-know, as surely some of the son's board members were, would have seen in the letter an allusion to his father's searing Tyco experience (a fact the reader would have to be told too), which seemed an additional reason not to offer the letter to the world as an uncomplicated upwelling of revulsion against CEO pay.

Not a word about any of this made it into the Times's lengthy rendition, which simply quoted from the letter at length, treating it as a deus ex machina from the corporate world, a CEO spontaneously decrying the greed of his kind. "One Wall Street executive atop a fast-growing firm is saying no to the piles of pay that make corporate America's world spin so splendidly," said the piece.

It struck me then and strikes me now that the problem here wasn't just journalistic gullibility or a failure to ask the obvious question. It was a lack of any real feel for human beings or messy reality on the part of a reporter known for relentless but unanalytical execrations of CEO pay.

There's also the Times' latest "whistleblower" who appears to be highly questionable. Any responsible journalist would have kicked this guy to the curb, but to the Times, he's some kind of hero. I remember reading something a long time ago that bears on this matter. Take a subject you are a genuine expert on and then read a newspaper report on the subject. All too often, you'll find that the paper has some, often many, things quite wrong. The human tendency is to shake your head, then go right back to reading the paper and believing their stories on other subjects.

Odd, isn't it? Read the whole thing it touches on the pending battle over control of the New York Times. Maybe this time Pinch can be ousted.