Analog Devices Does Not Deny Wrongdoing

When I was a newspaper reporter early in my writing career, a seasoned colleague warned me about the sensitive nature of headline writing (and, it turns out, public relations, legal advice, and crisis management consulting). "Be very careful about putting a denial in a headline," he counseled. "It makes whoever's doing the denying look completely guilty."

As I read about recent SEC settlements with one of many companies involved in stock options backdating, it struck me that some clever-minded advisors have caught on to the "denial problem." When the SEC reached a settlement with Analog Devices Inc. -- in which the company agreed to pay a reported $3 million to settle charges that it backdated stock options to executives, directors, and employees -- the company's CEO agreed to do so, The Wall Street Journal reported, "without admitting or denying wrongdoing," (my italics).

It makes me wonder: who coined this Catch-22-esque linguistic innovation? Wasn't it once sufficient to settle and pay a fine without admitting wrongdoing? Now, we're not admitting or denying -- so, what does that mean? It sounds as if the alleged misbehavior may or may not have occurred in some wrinkle in time that is now permanently deleted from this dimension of reality.

Fortunately, headlines (including this headline) still sound fishy.