Categories: OLD Media Moves

Fake Bank of America release targets Dow Jones, WSJ

A fake news release claiming that Bank of America was seeking public input on how to run the bank was sent to business journalists at Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

A Dow Jones story states, “Dressed in BofA’s famed ‘flagstaff’ logos and color, the release was sent by email to a number of recipients at Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. The release falsely indicated that the information was being disseminated via Business Wire, which routinely delivers press releases to news outlets.

“Dow Jones Newswires mistakenly published the fake press release and a headline about the release around 9:15 a.m. EDT Wednesday. A post from the Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal blog later reported the press release was a hoax. That post was published on Dow Jones Newswires at 10:52 a.m. EDT. The fake press release and headline were subsequently removed from Dow Jones’s archival systems. Ashley Huston, a spokesperson for Dow Jones, said the company regrets the error.

“A spokesman for Bank of America, who confirmed the release was a fake, said the bank doesn’t plan to take action against the sender of the email.

“A spokeswoman for Business Wire confirmed that the release was not sent by Business Wire, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, and had no further comment.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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View Comments

Rami Grunbaum says:
April 19, 2012 at 12:47 am
No doubt a lot of other business journalists received it, as we did. A careful reading was enough to arouse suspicion that it was fake. Maybe the lede here is that a fake press release disregarded by various business journalists was taken at face value by Dow Jones...?