The Backdating Molehill

In a column in today's Wall Street Journal headlined "The Backdating Molehill Revisited," Holman Jenkins writes about the options backdating scandal, "We can't close without mentioning the exemplary diligence and enterprise with which, way back when, certain reporters and editors uncovered the backdating phenomenon, and then the intellectual sluggishness with which they analyzed it. They found an interesting story (one that fit well under the current interest in behavioral economics) and then got it fundamentally wrong by insisting on shoving it into a procrustean off-the-shelf narrative of executive 'greed.'" "Intellectual sluggishness"! "Fundamendally wrong"! Who are these reporters and editors, Mr. Jenkins? Might they be the columnist's own colleagues at the Wall Street Journal, who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for what the citation for "a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper" called a "creative and comprehensive probe into backdated stock options for business executives that triggered investigations, the ouster of top officials and widespread change in corporate America"? The Jenkins column leaves them unnamed. We're not taking sides here in the debate between Mr. Jenkins and his colleagues, just pointing it out as newsworthy.