Filed under: Deals, Newspapers, Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Media World

When it comes to big merger news, investors let the media get away with making sleazy deals with sources in exchange for access. The case of the aborted Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) — Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) deal is no different.

Investors would be nauseated by the amount of butts that get kissed behind the scenes during these drawn-out sagas. Reporters suck up to companies, public relations people and investment bankers and vice versa. I saw some of this first hand when I worked for Bloomberg and would write about deals from time to time.

Since the number of people who actually know anything about an acquisition is fairly small, members of the media contort themselves into rhetorical knots to protect the identities of the people who are spilling the beans. That’s why these types of stories are filled with phrases that no one would ever utter in daily conversation such as a “person familiar with the situation” or a “person familiar with (insert executive’s or company’s name) thinking”or my personal favorite “a person close to the company.”

Continue reading Media World: Use of anonymous sources on Microsoft-Yahoo! deal got out of hand

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 4:14 am and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.