How UAL's '02 Bankruptcy Became News in 2008

It turns out newspapers weren't to blame for that erroneously republished six-year-old story that caused UAL stock to nosedive yesterday morning.

Initial reports had pointed fingers at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, whose online archive was the repository of a 2002 article from the Chicago Tribune about the airline giant's bankruptcy filing. But Tribune Co., which owns both the Sun-Sentinel and the Tribune, looked into the matter and found "an investment advisory and research firm" was the true guilty party.

Tribune doesn't name the firm, but The New York Times and other outlets identify it as Income Securities Advisors of Miami Lakes, Fla. The firm's president, Richard Lehmann, says the story from the Sun-Sentinel's archive, lacking a date, popped up when one of his reporters conducted a Google search for 2008 bankruptcy filings. It's unclear why a six-year-old story would have come up so high in Google's search listing; Lehmann tells The Wall Street Journal he believes someone may have been practicing a malign form of "market manipulation."

In any case, it seems the real damage was done after Income Security Advisors disseminated the story over Bloomberg News. Surely Steve Jobs would roll over in his grave if he knew this sort of thing was still going on.