Misinformation in plenty

Was reading a finance article and came across a piece of article that claimed that a certain company is suffering X millions of dollar loss per month because of a certain virus. Massive number I thought, let me look around and see if this is true.

Checked around and came across articles that said:

• X million dollar of losses incurred
• X million dollar of profits lost
• X million dollar of sales lost

Anyone who knows anything about finance and accounting would tell you that the 3 are not one and the same and yet an article was claiming that the company had made losses when the actual company had just said their sales would be down than usual.

By not checking the sources and double checking what we read is like inviting the misinformation to come and ruin our knowledge and the quality of decisions we make.