The Company He Keeps

January 8, 2014 | By Greg Fisher, creditscoring.com

Stop, Jeff! Stop! - "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"

From: Greg Fisher [mailto:greg@creditscoring.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 12:31 PM
To: Robert M. Lawless, regular contributor, Credit Slips
Cc: Mark Powden, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown; Angela K. Littwin, professor, University of Texas; John Warnock, chairman, Salon Media Group Inc.; Donald E. Graham; Donald E. Graham (2)
Subject: Re: Credit score, employers, the company he keeps, veritas

I predict that you will make a correction.

You wrote, falsely, “[U.S.] Senator [Elizabeth] Warren's bill would institute a federal ban and has been widely reported elsewhere (see here (Slate) and here (CBS) for useful overviews).”

Your first hyperlink in that sentence leads to Salon, not Slate. Make a correction today, and acknowledge the error on the same page as your error just as I forced NBC to do.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. The Salon item states (in its subheadline no less), “With credit scores being exploited to cut people out of the job market, here's how the senator is fighting back.”

Employers do not use credit scores. I looked into it. False information has serious consequences. While there is enough blame to go around, there is nowhere else to turn to get the truth out. When the New York Times can’t even get simple facts right, where do I take the story next?

In the body of the Salon article, with no clarification, the writer states, “’A credit score,’ Warren argued, ‘should not be used as a way to cut people out of the job market.’”

I did not hear the legislator's comment, but you may have evidence regarding her understanding of the issue: Five years ago, I sent you a copy of my correspondence with Elizabeth Warren. Since then, this cat herding has not gone well. Thinking that media are the major problem, I began Page A2 – Media accuracy, errors and corrections. But, actually, the fundamental problem is, simply, falsity (from any quarter). So, that is the focus of the next project.

It is just getting started.

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Greg Fisher
The Credit Scoring Site
creditscoring.com
Page A2
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PO Box 342
Dayton, Ohio 45409-0342