FORTUNE — Here’s the Times’ original story about GE, which says in the third paragraph: “Its American tax bill? None.” And here’s the story that Jeff Gerth of ProPublica and I published on Apr. 4, pointing out that the Times had confused a number that companies use to report earnings with a totally different (and non-public) number they use to determine taxes owed to the IRS.
As part of our article, Gerth and I quoted GE’s chief spokesman, Gary Sheffer, who said that GE (GE) would pay a small amount of U.S. tax for 2010. We also wrote that companies don’t have to disclose the income tax they incur for a given year; meaning, of course, that there’s no way the Times could have known it.
The Times has since adopted our two key points, both of which contradict its Mar. 25 story. But it has never resolved the contradictions between those points and, “Its American tax bill? None.”
First, on Aug. 31, deep in a story about a CEO pay survey, the Times quotes GE as saying that it had paid a small tax for 2010.
Then on Sept. 10, 2011 the Times mentioned, in passing, that there’s no way for outsiders to know how much in taxes companies pay.
The Times didn’t reconcile its Mar. 25 story with either one of these, and declined comment when I asked about it.
I’ve gone through this journalistic navel-gazing exercise to prove to you that the Times’ original story was wrong, and that the paper has now implicitly recognized that. The point isn’t to disparage the Times, which made an honest mistake. The point is to help encourage an informed discussion about corporate taxes. That debate requires facts, not convenient fictions.
