Tribune Says Panic-Causing (Old) United Story Did Appear On 'Sun Sentinel' Web Site

By: Mark Fitzgerald Updating the expired United Airlines bankruptcy story snafu, Tribune Co. late Tuesday that a dynamic link to the 2002 story that caused a stock market panic was briefly on the Web site of its South Florida Sun Sentinel.

"Our records show that due to traffic volume, sometime between 1:00:34 a.m. EDT, Sunday, September 7 ... and 1:36:03 a.m. EDT, Sunday, September 7 ... a link to the old article appeared in a dynamic portion of the Sun Sentinel's business section, grouped with other stories under a tab entitled 'Popular Stories Business:Most Viewed,' Tribune said in a statement.

"No new story was published and the old story was not re-published -- a link to the old story was merely provided," it added.

Tribune said at 1:36:57 a.m. EDT on Sunday Google's Googlebot search agent crawled the story on the Sun Sentinel's site -- as it had done as recently as last week without linking the story to Google News.

This time, Tribune said, the Googlebot linked the story, which was retrieved from Google News about three minutes later.

Income Securities Advisors Inc., a Miami Lakes, Fla., firm distributed the story to a site operated by Bloomberg News, according to multiple press reports Tuesday.

United on Monday blamed the Sun Sentinel for the report that dragged its stock price down 76% before trading was halted.

Sun Sentinel editors denied they had posted the story, and Monday night Tribune Co. issued this statement after what it called a "preliminary investigation": "To be clear, no story appeared today or over the weekend on the Sun Sentinel website or any Tribune website regarding United Airlines' filing for bankruptcy."

Tribune reiterated Tuesday that the story "contains information that would clearly lead a reader to the conclusion that it was related to events in 2002," and it noted that comments posted with the story were dated 2002.

"It appears that no one who passed this story along actually bothered to read the story itself," the Tribune statement said.