Reuters gets schooled by one its own writers - Felix Salmon

In a rare move by a modern news outlet, Felix Salmon on his Reuters blog schools the news service over a wildly inaccurate and conservative-oriented take on the Occupy Wall Street movement that appeared on the news service earlier in the day. The original article garnered wide derision throughout social media after it credited George Soros with funding OWS. That charge is of course false.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see this mea culpa from Salmon, concluding with this telling paragraph (emphasis mine):

Reuters cannot — must not — get a reputation as a right-wing media outlet. We have to report the news as impartially as we can. In this case, there was no story, and nothing to report. Inventing a tenuous and intellectually-dishonest link between Soros and OWS might get us traffic from Matt Drudge — but that’s traffic which, frankly, we don’t particularly value or care for. Much more importantly, it serves to undermine the heart of what Reuters stands for. And we can never afford to do that.

Boo Reuters for publishing the shoddy bit of propaganda in the first place. Hooray Felix Salmon for setting straight the distortions of the original story.

UPDATE: Commenter mattbastard correctly notes that this mea culpa is not the official position of Reuters. Notes MB:

From Salmon's post: "I should mention here explicitly that this post, just like everything else on this blog, is my personal opinion. It may or may not be shared by others within the organization. But it should emphatically not be taken as representing the views of Thomson Reuters".

The post has been adjusted to accommodate these corrections. Thanks Matt.

UPDATE II: Thanks to commenter Southern Quebec, looks like the idiots - Mark Egan and Michelle Nichols - who wrote the original article have atoned for their journalistic sins with a kind of a retraction:

Soros spokesman Michael Vachon said that Soros has not "funded the protests directly or indirectly." He added: "Assertions to the contrary are an attempt by those who oppose the protesters to cast doubt on the authenticity of the movement."

No apologies were  provided although this bit tagged onto the end is interesting:

(Additional reporting by Cezary Podkul in New York and Cameron French in Toronto, writing by Mark Egan, editing by Claudia Parsons)

No mention of Michelle Nichols although that Mark Egan still has a job at Reuters, let alone writing the non-apology correction, is a sign of the corruption at the heart of the journalistic beast.

UPDATE: The Atltantic runs through the 'dizzying changes' to the Reuters changes to this story.