United Airlines Not Bankrupt, Demands Retraction from Tribune Co

UAL, parent of United Airlines, has demanded a retraction from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel after the newspaper's website published a link to a six-year-old article on UAL Corp's bankruptcy in 2002, Reuters reports. Tribune Co, which owns the Sun-Sentinel, said other news organizations mistakenly presented the article as new.

UAL shares fell 76 percent to $3 after the article was posted on the Bloomberg financial news service.

The article became available on Bloomberg due to the excessive amount of web traffic to the Sun Sentinel's website that pushed the story to the company's "Popular Stories Business: Most Viewed" section, which gained the attention of a Google news search agent.

"No new story was published, and the old story was not re-published -- a link to the old story was merely provided," Tribune said in a press release on Tuesday. "Importantly, the URL for the old story did not change when the link appeared on the website's business section."