Media Duped Again on 'MicroHoo' Rumor

The Business Press Maven is not saying that every calcified, discredited rumor needs to be detonated on the spot, killed in the crib. Far be it for me to be so brash.

But when we've already seen published rumors from the business media that Microsoft(MSFT Quote) is going to take over Yahoo!(YHOO Quote), and then we see them again (like, uh, Tuesday), don't you think investors should be told, "This thing we are traveling on has proved to be a bridge to nowhere"?

It was on a cold, rainy day in my soul back in May when The New York Post made a big call that Microsoft was going to take over Yahoo!, which put Yahoo!'s stock into a tizzy. Whoa, said The Business Press Maven, who called for his home test kit for such market-moving articles, which is called source analysis.

I even had to scoop myself to get the source analysis out there as soon as possible.

Essentially, the Post article used several sources, all unnamed. I can be cool with that in isolated circumstances, but before I go and believe there's going to be a MicroHoo in our future, I have to get some sense of who these Chatty Cathies are. They could be Bill Gates or, more likely, a risk-arb salesman looking to pump the stock. Speaking of that, a Reuters article soon followed, naming precisely one source. He was a ... risk-arb salesman. And from a third-tier firm, no less. I guess one media outlet's inside scoop is another's self-interested numskull.