Warren Buffett, Joe Nocera and ’Fessing Up to Readers

By: Margaret Sullivan | New York Times

Mistakes are inevitable. So, too, are newspaper corrections, since newspapers are full of those pesky things known as facts and are produced by human beings, who have a tendency to get things wrong sometimes.

But some mistakes are bigger than others, and this was the case in two related columns by Joe Nocera about Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, concerning sky-high executive compensation at Coca-Cola, where Mr. Buffett is the largest shareholder. In short, Mr. Buffett thinks executive compensation is out of whack; he abstained from voting to approve it at Coca-Cola but did not vote against it, as some thought he should have done, including Mr. Nocera.