As far as official denials go, it was clear and emphatic.

Lori Willis, communications director of the Schnucks grocery chain, issued this response after a reporter with the Memphis Commercial Appeal recently asked if the rumors were true that her company was selling its local stores to Kroger.

Typically, we would not comment on rumor and speculation, but I will acknowledge these rumors have gotten to a point with the media where I feel I need to tell you there is no truth to those rumors. There is no deal regarding any sale or purchase with regard to the Schnucks company.

Eight days later, Schnucks announced it was… selling its Memphis stores to Kroger. The Appeal had been hearing rumors of a sale from Schnucks employees and other sources prior to the announcement. That’s why it reached out for comment from the company.

With Willis’s denial on record, the paper had to decide whether to emphasize that or the information coming in from other sources. Multiple sources were telling it one thing. But a single, authoritative source offered an unequivocal denial. These kinds of calculations are faced by journalists all the time. We have to weigh factors such as the content of the information, the source, the timing… many things come into play.

But in this case it seemed like a fairly obvious decision: you lead with the strong denial from the company. That’s what the paper did.

Naturally, when the sale was announced, the folks at The Commercial Appeal were upset about being lied to. Their response was to write about it. The reporter went back to Willis to ask why she had lied to them. Here’s an excerpt from the story that leads with a quote from Willis:

“First of all, thanks for understanding my situation. Yes, until now, we were bound by an agreement to stay silent on the issue.”

But Schnucks had not been silent. It had said no deal was in the works.

Asked about the apparent untruth Tuesday, Willis responded that a mere “no comment” would have been misconstrued.

“I did not lie to you,” she told a reporter. “I gave you the best information I had at the time…

“Whenever you’re working on an agreement of this type, nothing happens overnight. But it’s not a deal until it’s a deal. Discussions beforehand can be very detrimental when you are trying to make arrangements.”

When a PR person provides inaccurate information, it’s usually because they made an honest mistake. They may do their best to spin something, but actively providing false information is far more rare. The problem is that journalists are often at the mercy of our sources. If a company spokesperson tells you emphatically that something is not happening, you don’t expect them to deliberately mislead you. When that happens, it destroys our source/information calculations.

Our reliance on sources is both a strength and a weakness for journalists. It works in our favor because finding the right sources can blow a story wide open, provide new and interesting information, or bring a narrative to life. The wrong sources expose us to falsehoods, manipulation, or simply waste our time.

I’ve previously written about the danger with sources, and focused on what I call the self-interested source. These people often fool us because they have a good story to tell. They lie to the press to gain some sort of benefit, or to make themselves or those they’re associated with look better.

Willis’s actions are similar in that she lied in order to gain a benefit for her employer. From her comments, she seemed to think she needed to lie and say there wasn’t a deal in order for a deal to happen. You could call it a paradox or a conundrum if it weren’t for the fact that it’s neither of those things to someone that tells the truth.

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