13 ms·

Let's say Super Micro is right and there were no malicious hardware at all for sure. What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, ther

by neya 8y ago

Let's say Super Micro is right and there were no malicious hardware at all for sure. What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. Just because you're a news organization, you can't simply escape with "Oh, my bad". This had real implications on stock prices of so many companies and wiped off shareholder value on many of them, including Super Micro. If Bloomberg's story was false, they shouldn't just walk away like that because "it's the free press".

rincebrain 8y ago
I believe the current line there, at least in the US, is whether they knowingly ran factually inaccurate information. Given their doubling down, unless we assume they somehow didn't ask their legal department, I would bet they have enough sources for the information that they think they're not at risk of being prosecuted for libel or slander.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  The bar for libel and slander is very high. I also think it’s civil and not criminal, so there would be no prosecution in any case, they would just get sued.
Despegar 8y ago
Bloomberg is in the process of re-reporting the story according to Erik Wemple. They've assigned a new reporter to find out what's going on. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/11/27/bloomberg-is-still-reporting-on-challenged-story-regarding-china-hardware-hack https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/11/...
finnthehuman 8y ago
>What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? You, not the general concept of the reader, but you personally neya. You stop trusting Bloomberg's reporting. That's the consequence. Their reputation suffers. Why do threads like this on HN always have such a desire for retribution?
- bob_theslob646 8y ago
  Their reporters are compensated based off of whether or not they move markets. Did you know that? (https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...)
  - admax88q 8y ago
    That doesn't seem like a bad goal. It incentivizes stories that are important to their target market, and provides an easy way to measure that.
    - piva00 8y ago
      Or you can apply Goodhart's Law[0] and try to picture how wrong that can also go. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
    - sosborn 8y ago
      > That doesn't seem like a bad goal. Like most sales goals, it seems reasonable. And then you remember that when it comes to pay, some people will do anything.
    - atoav 8y ago
      The thing is – if you have such an incentive and you are faced with the choice between reporting a boring truth or a spiced up lie, you will go for the later. And that has nothing to do with journalism anymore. It _could_ work – if the editors are espeically on the hunt for bogus stories.
      - occamrazor 8y ago
        This was the opening story on their homepage. There us no way the editors (and the legal department) did not scrutinize it thoroughly.
        8y ago
crunchlibrarian 8y ago
When the state department tells you to write a story you write the story, or face the real prospect of the end of access which will be the end your journalism career. Not an ideal system for anyone, except the state department.
- danso 8y ago
  These reporters cover tech and ostensibly do not need access to the State Department. Nevermind the fact that the reporters who do cover the State Dept still enjoy access despite continuing to publish unflattering stories about the govt.
- noselasd 8y ago
  Anything to back that up ?
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Oh sure, that's what we need backup for, some random comment on a social news site. Not some hardware firm's claims that they haven't been hacked, nor some news media firm's claims that they were.
    - Karunamon 8y ago
      Your snark aside, Bloomberg made these claims, it's on them to back it up. Not the other way around. So far, not a single fact has surfaced that lends those claims any credence.
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        I personally have learned more about the supply chain for various big tech firms. I have learned that something like what the original story described is possible, in that USA-based firms have no reliable way to prevent such hacking. That doesn't mean I believe Bloomberg's version, but then again I rarely do. I'm just not in such a hurry to believe SuperMicro's version either... We don't have to act as if we know what really happened. I don't see why anyone would be so sure that GP's speculation above about the State Department is unfounded either.
mtgx 8y ago
The companies/shareholders being affected by this are free to sue the paper over defamation. Something tells me they won't.
- makomk 8y ago
  They're free to sue the paper, but it'd be futile because the standard for such lawsuits to succeed in the US basically requires Bloomberg to have known that the claims were false. Just (say) completely ignoring normal journalistic practices to get a juicy scoop would not be enough.
  - wl 8y ago
    Well, Rolling Stone settled over the UVA rape story. Then again, that settlement is rather small in the grand scheme of things. Given the nature of the case, maybe it was cheaper than going to trial. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-rolling-stone-frat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-r... Edit: I forgot about this case, where they lost at trial. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/media/in-rolling-stone-defamation-case-magazine-and-reporter-ordered-to-pay-3-million.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/media/in-rolling...
    - makomk 8y ago
      As I recall, Rolling Stone got done on a (somewhat dubious) technicality - the jury decided that them adding the disclaimer counted as republishing the article after they knew it was false. If it wasn't for that they'd most likely have got away with it despite all the astoundingly bad reporting.
  - devy 8y ago
    > They're free to sue the paper, but it'd be futile because the standard for such lawsuits to succeed in the US Not sure about whether Bloomberg was knowingly publishing false stories. But lawsuits causing media to bankrupt have precedence before - Gwarker Media, that was.
- 8y ago
stareatgoats 8y ago
No, they shouldn't just walk away. They should apply sound journalistic principles to investigate exactly how they came to the conclusion, and then publish that investigation with full disclosure. Not sure if I've ever seen a news organization do that though (minimal retractions in a place no-one looks doesn't count).
- ghaff 8y ago
  CBS Killian Papers pretty much. There have been some significant examples but there actually aren’t that many cases of a major pub running a “scoop” that no other major pub runs with as well that turns out to be flat out wrong. There are certainly examples of mainstream media as a whole getting behind a story like lead-up to Iraq War but this is something different.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    Another one that comes to mind is This American Life with the iPhone Chinese factory story. They did an entire episode (hour long) and how/why the error happened.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      And still another is the Rolling Stone campus rape story. It does happen but when major media outlets are found to have published a major story that’s flat out untrue there does tend to be a pretty loud mea culpa.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - vidarh 8y ago
    I think that's in large part because often many others will pile in by referring to the newspaper that ran it. I wouldn't count that in same class, as they're often "technically" not wrong in that they're reporting that "according to X, Y happened" rather than making the false claim that "Y happened". The fake Hitler diaries would be one of the really major examples of this, where Stern, Newsweek and the Sunday Times ran the primary stories, and lots of other publications ran stories about the stories in those three. And that's also a major example of the main sources taking a lot of flack afterwards, with firings, lawsuits, and books and movies about it afterwards, but it's not clear if it actually harmed the newspapers themselves. E.g. Murdoch has suggested the Sunday Times actually profited from it in the long run as Stern paid them back what they paid for access, and it boosted their subscription numbers even after the hoax was revealed.
vertline3 8y ago
If they are wrong about this, they can be wrong about anything. Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.
- dvdgsng 8y ago
  TIL
- jancsika 8y ago
  You've been identified by Napier's "Black Rooster." In order to figure out which servant was stealing from him, Napier instructed each to go in the shed and pet a magic rooster that he claimed could reveal to him who the thief was. In reality, Napier covered the rooster in soot. Thus he could identify the culprit-- it was the only servant who exited the shed without soot on their hands. Here, you correctly applied one sense of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect-- a novelist's speculation about experts' inability/refusal to generalize their criticism of a news item within their field to the entire newspaper that contains it. In practice, however, "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" is a gambit that giving a proper name to rank speculation will cause the speculation to propagate as if it were an insight gleaned from a robust research project. If you had understood that part you would have used the rank speculation only an entry point for a comment that provided greater insight (or at least further rank speculation), rather than an insightful phenomenon unto itself. Edit: In other words, you've emerged from the shed without anything other than someone's rank speculation masquerading as research. This makes it clear you've fallen for the 2nd-order effect of the term. Also be wary of: Overton window
  - vertline3 8y ago
    By saying I did not pet the rooster you are saying that I misapplied it in way that was lying. This is odious. They published a story not considering the feasability of it. People who knew better called them out. Crichton himself noted the irony of it by using the famous name to attach greater importance to it. Yet he noted it is true that we will quickly forget when reading other stories and himself has called for turning away from media. Finally Overton's Window for me is about framing debate and can be applied over broad areas.
  - 8y ago
Symmetry 8y ago
It apparently wasn't the first time these reporters had gone off the rails.[1] [1]https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/1049617855396933632 https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/1049617855396933632
- albedoa 8y ago
  One was also the author of the fake NSA Heartbleed exploit story, which Bloomberg stood by: https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/1049018902984835072 https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/104901890298483507...
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    So why are we giving these reporters the time of day, then? They've demonstrably published crap and not retracted it. That reduces their credibility to nil in my mind.
  - paganel 8y ago
    Any good sources on the NSA Heartbleed exploit story? A very quick search only gives me he said (Bloomberg) - he said (NSA) stories.
reasonablemann 8y ago
What were the consequences of running bitcoin stories as the bubble peaked? A couple rich journalists no doubt.
chx 8y ago
Nothing. I was downvoted to oblivion less than a week when I said Bloomberg is over and Hackernews should embargo them and people shouldn't click them. Edit: and the downvote brigade is here again, downvoting and not giving a word of explanation. Are you paid by Bloomberg?
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  I downvote people that whine about downvoting. I downvote people who accuse everyone who disagrees with them of being shills. Aside from this I consider "Bloomberg is over" a gross exaggeration". Furthermore one mistake if mistake it is doesn't justify banning that publication from hacker news. Furthermore who are you to be talking about banning anyone from this site in any case. You get lots of down votes because there are so many reasons to downvote this post not because of some conspiracy.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
It's up to SuperMicro to sue for libel.
ksec 8y ago
SuperMicro, Apple, Amazon, and others could sue Bloomberg. But they didn't. I guess if you sue every news outlet for Rumours then Apple would be basically suing everyone. My problem is, why Apple and Amazon has such as "restrained" action to Bloomberg. May be the story isn't true, but something do smells fishy to me.
- hopler 8y ago
  Apple isn't going to win a libel case because some source lied or made a mistake, and calling more attention to it is bad PR. It's extremely unlikely that Bloomberg team did this with malicious lies.
- matwood 8y ago
  > But they didn't. Yet. All 3 have issued firm denials rarely given from companies today. I don't think any of them have been restrained at all.
- macintux 8y ago
  This is the same logic Musk applied to “pedo guy” and it was just as ridiculous then. A lack of legal action is in no way an admission that the story was accurate.
  - ksec 8y ago
    Accusing two Trillion dollar company with allegation on a national security level from a reasonably respected Business Journal is not the same as Mush calling another guy pedo. Although I do agree A lack of legal action is in no way an admission that the story was accurate, I just thought they should do something more.
BooneJS 8y ago
I presume Bloomberg will release their raw data and pay for the audit. I’ve been wrong before.
pjc50 8y ago
So, when looking at this, we have to remember that reporters aren't analysts; they're not expected to have subject-specific background and make personal judgement calls as to what the underlying truth is. If you want that you can certainly get it - for a much higher price than a newspaper. That's what firms like Gartner are for. Reporters to a very large extent report what sources say. Their judgement comes in considering the credibility of the source. In this case they got a number of "credible" but anonymous sources. What they need to do now is make a choice: a) burn the sources: publish the names and start investigating them and why they might have fed false information to Bloomberg. This will make it harder for them to get stories in the future, and may be considered a breach of journalistic ethics by some, but it also makes it less likely that people will try to play them like this in the future. b) try to find some on-the-record sources for their story.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  This is a case of c) Reporters were completely reckless. They bought a small 0402 decoupling capacitor, put it on pencil tip, and then claimed that it was a chip that could hack your device. Any EE worth their salt knows exactly what 0402 decoupling capacitors do, and that there's no way you can hack from that angle. It has to do where that particular chip is placed: usually on power-lines... not really signal-traces. The fact that all known security forces are denying the story (not just big companies like Apple... but also Homeland Security), means that the reporters likely misunderstood what their sources were trying to say. They published a bad story, exaggerating a molehill into a mountain. ----------- The thing is: we all know that BMCs are very insecure. A lot of the problem is that the Bloomberg article is pointing at lol 0402 decoupling capacitors, when any security researcher worth their salt is looking at the BMC instead. There are too many technical details in the Bloomberg article that were outright WRONG. Its a clear cut case of reporters misunderstanding things and focusing on the wrong thing.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    A lot of people got hung up on the photos, but did the text actually state what they were or were they just "for illustrative purposes" like stock photos?
lmilcin 8y ago
I believe freedom of speech and press is one thing but when you present serious and very specific allegations you should be able to back them up with comparably serious and specific proofs ("extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"). Otherwise we are crossing the boundary between fact and fiction. The way Bloomberg presented it in the article is as if they had entire story backed by facts. That was my takeaway they sounded pretty sure save for presenting the evidence. Now, what you do if press outright misrepresents the facts and presents fictional story as if it was entirely factual.
freeflight 8y ago
Nothing, just like nothing will happen to the outlets who are currently pushing this "Huwai is spying on everybody" narrative with not an ounce of evidence for it except for unfounded and unsourced claims by FiveEyes intelligence services [0]. Afaik that whole Bloomberg/Super Micro thing was similarly set up, referring to "anonymous intelligence/industry services", not even naming the company that supposedly did the security audit. People have to realize that these kinds of narratives are often pushed by parties in the West, with a vested interest, just as much as it happens in the supposedly "propaganda riddled" East. It's for those same reasons that the amendments to the Smith-Mundson act, which happened back in 2013, haven't seen any widespread attention or even mention anywhere in the mainstream [1] because the good guys don't do "propaganda", they do "interventions" [2] and "information campaigns" [3]. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/afa7fd54-79b1-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d https://www.ft.com/content/afa7fd54-79b1-11e8-bc55-50daf11b7... [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op... [3] https://vimeo.com/67739294 https://vimeo.com/67739294
- na85 8y ago
  Regarding the five eyes sources, are we really expecting that intelligence agencies will give sources/proof?
  - ghostly_s 8y ago
    I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't expect a reporter to publish this info without finding anything corroborating. This whole story is about physical sabotage devices, supposedely planted in large quantities, why couldn't they find any of these devices or a single person willing to state they saw one?
  - dpwm 8y ago
    Yes.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
mtw 8y ago
Write that you do not trust Bloomberg on twitter/facebook/linkedin. If you have a blog, write about it. I am going to. Also read NYTimes or another news source instead of Bloomberg.
onemoresoop 8y ago
"It's capitalism, let's all compete. But wait, if you're getting better than me you're the enemy. " It goes both ways. US Capitalism vs meets Chinese Capitalism with C. Does anyone pay attention to the media in China? It's an equally bad actor. Now seriously, Bloomberg lost a lot of credibility publishing this. Let's see if they say anything about it in the coming days.
tanilama 8y ago
Nothing. The public had already forgotten this matter.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
What if there is some truth to such /similar allegations and Bloomberg knows that SunMicro would never sue, discovery and all. If during discovery it is shown that SunMicro dropped the ball 7 years or 5 months ago, it's no good news for their stockholders.
porpoisely 8y ago
I doubt anything will happen to Bloomberg. If the journalists are found to have fabricated the story, they will probably let go. Even if bloomberg was to suffer financially or legally, some billionaire or company would bail or buy them out like what happened with Rolling Stone or WashingtonPost in the past few years. Well Bloomberg wouldn't even need outside help since their owner and namesake is one of the wealthiest men in the world. These large news companies are pretty much untouchable since they are viewed as systematically important and are backed by the wealthy class.
vkou 8y ago
> Let's say Super Micro is right and there were no malicious hardware at all for sure. What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. What are the consequences for a public figure deliberately lying? What about accidentally lying? What if they are a private figure? If we're going to have consequences for this sort of stuff, we'd need to lock up most of the people in government, and the employees of every single PR department.
TomMckenny 8y ago
Any individual merely accused of a salacious crime has his face spread all over the evening news just to pump ratings. Guilt, innocence, evidence or trial outcome are utterly irrelevant. So it's quite wide spread. Of course the power dynamic between an ordinary joe and broadcasters is far different than between large corporations and broadcasters. This and worries around sponsors means there is already considerable self censorship when criticizing the latter. But I would not be surprised if industry lobbyist ultimately craft legislation to allow the former while preventing the latter through some high bar liability laws in such away that they get five already sympathetic SCOTUS justices to sign on.
User9991 8y ago
>If Bloomberg's story was false, they shouldn't just walk away like that because "it's the free press". So failure is fine, as long as it's Silicon Valley. Imagine what the world would be like if journalists investigating stories had to be 110% certain of their work? That if someone said, "that's not true" they'd have to ditch the story altogether? This controversy, and the aftermath (which isn't over, hence it's in the news today) sounds like "working as intended". >This had real implications on stock prices of so many companies Can you provide some references of the "so many" companies that were effected by this? What do you suggest as punishment?
duxup 8y ago
I think it is possible to have enough information to run a story, but still be wrong, and a "my bad" can suffice. Now how that plays out and where that line is, have at that debate until the end of time.
tomphoolery 8y ago
> What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. Hah! What makes you think they should be accountable after we elected a President on the basis of fake news stories?
pwthornton 8y ago
It's difficult to sue a news organization, but you can sue them for false reporting if you prove two things A) actual malice occurred and B) you suffered economic damages. If companies didn't lose money over this report, this is pretty moot. It's just embarrassing for Bloomberg. If companies did lose money, the next step is proving that they knowingly went with a poorly-sourced story. That would require discovery, which may be fruitful.
blueboo 8y ago
Why does there need to be something more? Do you trust Bloomberg the same amount you did bebfore the story was published? Are you buying just as many Businessweeks as before? Are you sure it isn't Bloomberg who was misled? Is that more or less likely than a billion dollar company declining to confirm a story that would cost them hugely? In lieu of proof either way, what punishment do you think is just -- and for whom?
coliveira 8y ago
Using the press to manipulate stock prices has been the standard practice for as long as these two institutions exist. You can go way back to the last years of the 19th century and will find that there was already a thriving business going on between stock manipulators and the press.
jjcc 8y ago
I personally think the reward system related current human evolution punishes blunt liars, but reward "Lie Lie" teller. A "Lie" is something that is easy to falsify with consensus. A "Lie Lie" is not a lie but a statement intend to mislead people, difficult to get caught, easy to find a lot of lie believer to defend, eventually make a technical evidence based debate into a religious belief based debate. It's a lie about lie or a decoration upon a "lie" so the "lie" can not be categorized as a lie. There are signatures of "Lie Lie"： * Claim there's a proof instead of provide the proof. actually any claimed proof often is not a proof but just claimers' belief. * The claims are mixed topics some legitimate and defendable possibility along with some thing that really happened. In simple words mix truth with lie so later the can defend truth topics. * When they give proof, they will provide the one that there are less controversial topics but not the needed ones. * Shift the focus to defendable topics so the undefendable part(i.e. belief based part) * Usually attached with moral high grounded good cause such as "raised the public awareness of threat from an oppressive regime" just as an example, so the "Lie Lie" teller can convince themselves and their friends, coworkers the claimers are decent people. *The claimers themselves believe the claims so they can claim they are not lying but they don't think they are using deceptive narratives to sell their beliefs. Most activists are "Lie Lie" tellers. The problem of our society is a lot of journalists become activists involved into ideological fight but pretend they are providing truth.
boznz 8y ago
Thats all the shorts were doing to tesla.. create fake news to affect the stock price.. whats the difference? (Serious question)

by neya 8y ago

rincebrain 8y ago

I believe the current line there, at least in the US, is whether they knowingly ran factually inaccurate information. Given their doubling down, unless we assume they somehow didn't ask their legal department, I would bet they have enough sources for the information that they think they're not at risk of being prosecuted for libel or slander.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
The bar for libel and slander is very high. I also think it’s civil and not criminal, so there would be no prosecution in any case, they would just get sued.

Despegar 8y ago

Bloomberg is in the process of re-reporting the story according to Erik Wemple. They've assigned a new reporter to find out what's going on. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/11/27/bloomberg-is-still-reporting-on-challenged-story-regarding-china-hardware-hack https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/11/...

finnthehuman 8y ago

>What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? You, not the general concept of the reader, but you personally neya. You stop trusting Bloomberg's reporting. That's the consequence. Their reputation suffers. Why do threads like this on HN always have such a desire for retribution?

bob_theslob646 8y ago
Their reporters are compensated based off of whether or not they move markets. Did you know that? (https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...)
- admax88q 8y ago
  That doesn't seem like a bad goal. It incentivizes stories that are important to their target market, and provides an easy way to measure that.
  - piva00 8y ago
    Or you can apply Goodhart's Law[0] and try to picture how wrong that can also go. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
  - sosborn 8y ago
    > That doesn't seem like a bad goal. Like most sales goals, it seems reasonable. And then you remember that when it comes to pay, some people will do anything.
  - atoav 8y ago
    The thing is – if you have such an incentive and you are faced with the choice between reporting a boring truth or a spiced up lie, you will go for the later. And that has nothing to do with journalism anymore. It _could_ work – if the editors are espeically on the hunt for bogus stories.
    - occamrazor 8y ago
      This was the opening story on their homepage. There us no way the editors (and the legal department) did not scrutinize it thoroughly.
      - 8y ago

crunchlibrarian 8y ago

When the state department tells you to write a story you write the story, or face the real prospect of the end of access which will be the end your journalism career. Not an ideal system for anyone, except the state department.

danso 8y ago
These reporters cover tech and ostensibly do not need access to the State Department. Nevermind the fact that the reporters who do cover the State Dept still enjoy access despite continuing to publish unflattering stories about the govt.
noselasd 8y ago
Anything to back that up ?
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Oh sure, that's what we need backup for, some random comment on a social news site. Not some hardware firm's claims that they haven't been hacked, nor some news media firm's claims that they were.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    Your snark aside, Bloomberg made these claims, it's on them to back it up. Not the other way around. So far, not a single fact has surfaced that lends those claims any credence.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      I personally have learned more about the supply chain for various big tech firms. I have learned that something like what the original story described is possible, in that USA-based firms have no reliable way to prevent such hacking. That doesn't mean I believe Bloomberg's version, but then again I rarely do. I'm just not in such a hurry to believe SuperMicro's version either... We don't have to act as if we know what really happened. I don't see why anyone would be so sure that GP's speculation above about the State Department is unfounded either.

mtgx 8y ago

The companies/shareholders being affected by this are free to sue the paper over defamation. Something tells me they won't.

makomk 8y ago
They're free to sue the paper, but it'd be futile because the standard for such lawsuits to succeed in the US basically requires Bloomberg to have known that the claims were false. Just (say) completely ignoring normal journalistic practices to get a juicy scoop would not be enough.
- wl 8y ago
  Well, Rolling Stone settled over the UVA rape story. Then again, that settlement is rather small in the grand scheme of things. Given the nature of the case, maybe it was cheaper than going to trial. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-rolling-stone-frat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-r... Edit: I forgot about this case, where they lost at trial. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/media/in-rolling-stone-defamation-case-magazine-and-reporter-ordered-to-pay-3-million.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/media/in-rolling...
  - makomk 8y ago
    As I recall, Rolling Stone got done on a (somewhat dubious) technicality - the jury decided that them adding the disclaimer counted as republishing the article after they knew it was false. If it wasn't for that they'd most likely have got away with it despite all the astoundingly bad reporting.
- devy 8y ago
  > They're free to sue the paper, but it'd be futile because the standard for such lawsuits to succeed in the US Not sure about whether Bloomberg was knowingly publishing false stories. But lawsuits causing media to bankrupt have precedence before - Gwarker Media, that was.
8y ago

stareatgoats 8y ago

No, they shouldn't just walk away. They should apply sound journalistic principles to investigate exactly how they came to the conclusion, and then publish that investigation with full disclosure. Not sure if I've ever seen a news organization do that though (minimal retractions in a place no-one looks doesn't count).

ghaff 8y ago
CBS Killian Papers pretty much. There have been some significant examples but there actually aren’t that many cases of a major pub running a “scoop” that no other major pub runs with as well that turns out to be flat out wrong. There are certainly examples of mainstream media as a whole getting behind a story like lead-up to Iraq War but this is something different.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Another one that comes to mind is This American Life with the iPhone Chinese factory story. They did an entire episode (hour long) and how/why the error happened.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    And still another is the Rolling Stone campus rape story. It does happen but when major media outlets are found to have published a major story that’s flat out untrue there does tend to be a pretty loud mea culpa.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vidarh 8y ago
  I think that's in large part because often many others will pile in by referring to the newspaper that ran it. I wouldn't count that in same class, as they're often "technically" not wrong in that they're reporting that "according to X, Y happened" rather than making the false claim that "Y happened". The fake Hitler diaries would be one of the really major examples of this, where Stern, Newsweek and the Sunday Times ran the primary stories, and lots of other publications ran stories about the stories in those three. And that's also a major example of the main sources taking a lot of flack afterwards, with firings, lawsuits, and books and movies about it afterwards, but it's not clear if it actually harmed the newspapers themselves. E.g. Murdoch has suggested the Sunday Times actually profited from it in the long run as Stern paid them back what they paid for access, and it boosted their subscription numbers even after the hoax was revealed.

vertline3 8y ago

If they are wrong about this, they can be wrong about anything. Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

dvdgsng 8y ago
TIL
jancsika 8y ago
You've been identified by Napier's "Black Rooster." In order to figure out which servant was stealing from him, Napier instructed each to go in the shed and pet a magic rooster that he claimed could reveal to him who the thief was. In reality, Napier covered the rooster in soot. Thus he could identify the culprit-- it was the only servant who exited the shed without soot on their hands. Here, you correctly applied one sense of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect-- a novelist's speculation about experts' inability/refusal to generalize their criticism of a news item within their field to the entire newspaper that contains it. In practice, however, "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" is a gambit that giving a proper name to rank speculation will cause the speculation to propagate as if it were an insight gleaned from a robust research project. If you had understood that part you would have used the rank speculation only an entry point for a comment that provided greater insight (or at least further rank speculation), rather than an insightful phenomenon unto itself. Edit: In other words, you've emerged from the shed without anything other than someone's rank speculation masquerading as research. This makes it clear you've fallen for the 2nd-order effect of the term. Also be wary of: Overton window
- vertline3 8y ago
  By saying I did not pet the rooster you are saying that I misapplied it in way that was lying. This is odious. They published a story not considering the feasability of it. People who knew better called them out. Crichton himself noted the irony of it by using the famous name to attach greater importance to it. Yet he noted it is true that we will quickly forget when reading other stories and himself has called for turning away from media. Finally Overton's Window for me is about framing debate and can be applied over broad areas.
- 8y ago

Symmetry 8y ago

It apparently wasn't the first time these reporters had gone off the rails.[1] [1]https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/1049617855396933632 https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/1049617855396933632

albedoa 8y ago
One was also the author of the fake NSA Heartbleed exploit story, which Bloomberg stood by: https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/1049018902984835072 https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/104901890298483507...
- Karunamon 8y ago
  So why are we giving these reporters the time of day, then? They've demonstrably published crap and not retracted it. That reduces their credibility to nil in my mind.
- paganel 8y ago
  Any good sources on the NSA Heartbleed exploit story? A very quick search only gives me he said (Bloomberg) - he said (NSA) stories.

reasonablemann 8y ago

What were the consequences of running bitcoin stories as the bubble peaked? A couple rich journalists no doubt.

chx 8y ago

Nothing. I was downvoted to oblivion less than a week when I said Bloomberg is over and Hackernews should embargo them and people shouldn't click them. Edit: and the downvote brigade is here again, downvoting and not giving a word of explanation. Are you paid by Bloomberg?

michaelmrose 8y ago
I downvote people that whine about downvoting. I downvote people who accuse everyone who disagrees with them of being shills. Aside from this I consider "Bloomberg is over" a gross exaggeration". Furthermore one mistake if mistake it is doesn't justify banning that publication from hacker news. Furthermore who are you to be talking about banning anyone from this site in any case. You get lots of down votes because there are so many reasons to downvote this post not because of some conspiracy.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

It's up to SuperMicro to sue for libel.

ksec 8y ago

SuperMicro, Apple, Amazon, and others could sue Bloomberg. But they didn't. I guess if you sue every news outlet for Rumours then Apple would be basically suing everyone. My problem is, why Apple and Amazon has such as "restrained" action to Bloomberg. May be the story isn't true, but something do smells fishy to me.

hopler 8y ago
Apple isn't going to win a libel case because some source lied or made a mistake, and calling more attention to it is bad PR. It's extremely unlikely that Bloomberg team did this with malicious lies.
matwood 8y ago
> But they didn't. Yet. All 3 have issued firm denials rarely given from companies today. I don't think any of them have been restrained at all.
macintux 8y ago
This is the same logic Musk applied to “pedo guy” and it was just as ridiculous then. A lack of legal action is in no way an admission that the story was accurate.
- ksec 8y ago
  Accusing two Trillion dollar company with allegation on a national security level from a reasonably respected Business Journal is not the same as Mush calling another guy pedo. Although I do agree A lack of legal action is in no way an admission that the story was accurate, I just thought they should do something more.

BooneJS 8y ago

I presume Bloomberg will release their raw data and pay for the audit. I’ve been wrong before.

pjc50 8y ago

So, when looking at this, we have to remember that reporters aren't analysts; they're not expected to have subject-specific background and make personal judgement calls as to what the underlying truth is. If you want that you can certainly get it - for a much higher price than a newspaper. That's what firms like Gartner are for. Reporters to a very large extent report what sources say. Their judgement comes in considering the credibility of the source. In this case they got a number of "credible" but anonymous sources. What they need to do now is make a choice: a) burn the sources: publish the names and start investigating them and why they might have fed false information to Bloomberg. This will make it harder for them to get stories in the future, and may be considered a breach of journalistic ethics by some, but it also makes it less likely that people will try to play them like this in the future. b) try to find some on-the-record sources for their story.

dragontamer 8y ago
This is a case of c) Reporters were completely reckless. They bought a small 0402 decoupling capacitor, put it on pencil tip, and then claimed that it was a chip that could hack your device. Any EE worth their salt knows exactly what 0402 decoupling capacitors do, and that there's no way you can hack from that angle. It has to do where that particular chip is placed: usually on power-lines... not really signal-traces. The fact that all known security forces are denying the story (not just big companies like Apple... but also Homeland Security), means that the reporters likely misunderstood what their sources were trying to say. They published a bad story, exaggerating a molehill into a mountain. ----------- The thing is: we all know that BMCs are very insecure. A lot of the problem is that the Bloomberg article is pointing at lol 0402 decoupling capacitors, when any security researcher worth their salt is looking at the BMC instead. There are too many technical details in the Bloomberg article that were outright WRONG. Its a clear cut case of reporters misunderstanding things and focusing on the wrong thing.
- pjc50 8y ago
  A lot of people got hung up on the photos, but did the text actually state what they were or were they just "for illustrative purposes" like stock photos?

lmilcin 8y ago

I believe freedom of speech and press is one thing but when you present serious and very specific allegations you should be able to back them up with comparably serious and specific proofs ("extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"). Otherwise we are crossing the boundary between fact and fiction. The way Bloomberg presented it in the article is as if they had entire story backed by facts. That was my takeaway they sounded pretty sure save for presenting the evidence. Now, what you do if press outright misrepresents the facts and presents fictional story as if it was entirely factual.

freeflight 8y ago

Nothing, just like nothing will happen to the outlets who are currently pushing this "Huwai is spying on everybody" narrative with not an ounce of evidence for it except for unfounded and unsourced claims by FiveEyes intelligence services [0]. Afaik that whole Bloomberg/Super Micro thing was similarly set up, referring to "anonymous intelligence/industry services", not even naming the company that supposedly did the security audit. People have to realize that these kinds of narratives are often pushed by parties in the West, with a vested interest, just as much as it happens in the supposedly "propaganda riddled" East. It's for those same reasons that the amendments to the Smith-Mundson act, which happened back in 2013, haven't seen any widespread attention or even mention anywhere in the mainstream [1] because the good guys don't do "propaganda", they do "interventions" [2] and "information campaigns" [3]. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/afa7fd54-79b1-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d https://www.ft.com/content/afa7fd54-79b1-11e8-bc55-50daf11b7... [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op... [3] https://vimeo.com/67739294 https://vimeo.com/67739294

na85 8y ago
Regarding the five eyes sources, are we really expecting that intelligence agencies will give sources/proof?
- ghostly_s 8y ago
  I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't expect a reporter to publish this info without finding anything corroborating. This whole story is about physical sabotage devices, supposedely planted in large quantities, why couldn't they find any of these devices or a single person willing to state they saw one?
- dpwm 8y ago
  Yes.
- StavrosK 8y ago

mtw 8y ago

Write that you do not trust Bloomberg on twitter/facebook/linkedin. If you have a blog, write about it. I am going to. Also read NYTimes or another news source instead of Bloomberg.

onemoresoop 8y ago

"It's capitalism, let's all compete. But wait, if you're getting better than me you're the enemy. " It goes both ways. US Capitalism vs meets Chinese Capitalism with C. Does anyone pay attention to the media in China? It's an equally bad actor. Now seriously, Bloomberg lost a lot of credibility publishing this. Let's see if they say anything about it in the coming days.

tanilama 8y ago

Nothing. The public had already forgotten this matter.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

What if there is some truth to such /similar allegations and Bloomberg knows that SunMicro would never sue, discovery and all. If during discovery it is shown that SunMicro dropped the ball 7 years or 5 months ago, it's no good news for their stockholders.

porpoisely 8y ago

I doubt anything will happen to Bloomberg. If the journalists are found to have fabricated the story, they will probably let go. Even if bloomberg was to suffer financially or legally, some billionaire or company would bail or buy them out like what happened with Rolling Stone or WashingtonPost in the past few years. Well Bloomberg wouldn't even need outside help since their owner and namesake is one of the wealthiest men in the world. These large news companies are pretty much untouchable since they are viewed as systematically important and are backed by the wealthy class.

vkou 8y ago

> Let's say Super Micro is right and there were no malicious hardware at all for sure. What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. What are the consequences for a public figure deliberately lying? What about accidentally lying? What if they are a private figure? If we're going to have consequences for this sort of stuff, we'd need to lock up most of the people in government, and the employees of every single PR department.

TomMckenny 8y ago

Any individual merely accused of a salacious crime has his face spread all over the evening news just to pump ratings. Guilt, innocence, evidence or trial outcome are utterly irrelevant. So it's quite wide spread. Of course the power dynamic between an ordinary joe and broadcasters is far different than between large corporations and broadcasters. This and worries around sponsors means there is already considerable self censorship when criticizing the latter. But I would not be surprised if industry lobbyist ultimately craft legislation to allow the former while preventing the latter through some high bar liability laws in such away that they get five already sympathetic SCOTUS justices to sign on.

User9991 8y ago

>If Bloomberg's story was false, they shouldn't just walk away like that because "it's the free press". So failure is fine, as long as it's Silicon Valley. Imagine what the world would be like if journalists investigating stories had to be 110% certain of their work? That if someone said, "that's not true" they'd have to ditch the story altogether? This controversy, and the aftermath (which isn't over, hence it's in the news today) sounds like "working as intended". >This had real implications on stock prices of so many companies Can you provide some references of the "so many" companies that were effected by this? What do you suggest as punishment?

duxup 8y ago

I think it is possible to have enough information to run a story, but still be wrong, and a "my bad" can suffice. Now how that plays out and where that line is, have at that debate until the end of time.

tomphoolery 8y ago

> What are the consequences for Bloomberg for this incompetence? I mean, there needs to be something.. Hah! What makes you think they should be accountable after we elected a President on the basis of fake news stories?

pwthornton 8y ago

It's difficult to sue a news organization, but you can sue them for false reporting if you prove two things A) actual malice occurred and B) you suffered economic damages. If companies didn't lose money over this report, this is pretty moot. It's just embarrassing for Bloomberg. If companies did lose money, the next step is proving that they knowingly went with a poorly-sourced story. That would require discovery, which may be fruitful.

blueboo 8y ago

Why does there need to be something more? Do you trust Bloomberg the same amount you did bebfore the story was published? Are you buying just as many Businessweeks as before? Are you sure it isn't Bloomberg who was misled? Is that more or less likely than a billion dollar company declining to confirm a story that would cost them hugely? In lieu of proof either way, what punishment do you think is just -- and for whom?

coliveira 8y ago

Using the press to manipulate stock prices has been the standard practice for as long as these two institutions exist. You can go way back to the last years of the 19th century and will find that there was already a thriving business going on between stock manipulators and the press.

jjcc 8y ago

I personally think the reward system related current human evolution punishes blunt liars, but reward "Lie Lie" teller. A "Lie" is something that is easy to falsify with consensus. A "Lie Lie" is not a lie but a statement intend to mislead people, difficult to get caught, easy to find a lot of lie believer to defend, eventually make a technical evidence based debate into a religious belief based debate. It's a lie about lie or a decoration upon a "lie" so the "lie" can not be categorized as a lie. There are signatures of "Lie Lie"： * Claim there's a proof instead of provide the proof. actually any claimed proof often is not a proof but just claimers' belief. * The claims are mixed topics some legitimate and defendable possibility along with some thing that really happened. In simple words mix truth with lie so later the can defend truth topics. * When they give proof, they will provide the one that there are less controversial topics but not the needed ones. * Shift the focus to defendable topics so the undefendable part(i.e. belief based part) * Usually attached with moral high grounded good cause such as "raised the public awareness of threat from an oppressive regime" just as an example, so the "Lie Lie" teller can convince themselves and their friends, coworkers the claimers are decent people. *The claimers themselves believe the claims so they can claim they are not lying but they don't think they are using deceptive narratives to sell their beliefs. Most activists are "Lie Lie" tellers. The problem of our society is a lot of journalists become activists involved into ideological fight but pretend they are providing truth.

boznz 8y ago

Thats all the shorts were doing to tesla.. create fake news to affect the stock price.. whats the difference? (Serious question)