New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera, who wrote his Saturday column about the new Hewlett Packard CEO and his involvement in an intellectual property theft lawsuit, has had to add an editor’s note to the column on Tuesday.
The reason? His fiancee is director of communications for the law firm that is involved in suing the CEO.
The editor’s note states: “In the Talking Business column in Business Day on Saturday, Joe Nocera wrote about a lawsuit by Oracle against a division of SAP, claiming theft of intellectual property. Mr. Nocera learned after the column was published that Oracle was represented by the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, where his fiancée works as director of communications. To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Mr. Nocera would not have written about the case if he had known of the law firm’s involvement.”
John Paczkowski of All Things Digital writes, “Odd to learn that Nocera, the Times’ star business columnist, was unaware that his own fiancée was a flak for the law firm repping Oracle in the suit (see screenshot above) that provided so much of the subject matter for his column.
“But it seems he was not, up to today, when he made a CNBC appearance on the subject.”
Read the editor’s note here. Read more from Paczkowski here.
