Media now giving H-P the business

TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs, who earlier felt as if the business press was not reporting the Hewlett-Packard spying story aggressively enough, now believes they have swung the pendulum to the other side.

Fuchs wrote, “Journalism is a human enterprise, and few of the humans writing about business actually have much experience investing. So ask yourself as you read anything: Is this story accurate, and will the conclusions make me money, or has the story line been superimposed on events, and will buying into these assumptions turn me into a financial chump?

“From the start of the Hewlett-Packard spying mess, The Business Press Maven has performed rough justice on business journalists who were nearly unanimous in declaring early on that the issue would not be a big one. Nonsense, I shrieked, warning people away from the stock.

“When so little is known about the issue in question (pretexting) and the issue seems so strange and creepy, the conclusion to the story will never be neat, tidy and quick.

“Propped up by the false hope this coverage encouraged and a strong market, the stock hung in there. But when there is a spread between story lines and reality, reality always wins.”

Later, he added, “Hell hath no fury like a business media that was wrong — they’ll ride the story both ways, overreacting as much as they originally underreacted.”

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