Sometimes a deal scoop is a legitimate piece of investigatory journalism; sometimes it's a gift. Occasionally, it's hard to tell whether missing a scoop or ignoring a story entirely are simply failures or oversights -- or something else entirely. Case in point: News Corp. and U.K. pay-TV operator British Sky Broadcasting Group plc.

June 15 must not have been the happiest of days for The Wall Street Journal's deal reporting crew. The paper was forced to credit a rival, London's Daily Telegraph, with breaking the news that the Journal's owner, News Corp., was making a play for the 61% of BSkyB that it didn't already own. To be sure, the fact that the Journal was scooped on a story about its own parent does allay fears that Rupert Murdoch would strategically feed his newspaper inside dope. But reporters don't like to get beat, especially on a story unfolding if not exactly under, at least on top of, their noses.

Nevertheless, the Journal dutifully reported the BSkyB news in a story sourced to "people familiar with the matter" and that ran on the front of its Marketplace section. While the piece noted "significant regulatory hurdles" the deal would face, it also spoke of the benefits that BSkyB would bring to News Corp., including the ability "to fully benefit from [its] steady cash flow." As for the price, the Journal informed that "the two sides so far have been unable to agree on terms."

Well, that's one way of putting it. That same day, the Financial Times came up with another. In a page-one story headlined "Murdoch rebuffed in move for control of BSkyB," the FT noted that Murdoch's approach valued his target at £11.6 billion ($17 billion), a price one "person familiar with BSkyB's position" told the paper was "miles off" and could not even be considered.

The Journal reported the rebuff online later that day and included a story about it in the next day's print edition. But the FT had clearly beaten the Journal on that key piece of news and had made the Journal's June 15 story on its parent's bid look woefully under-reported.

Meanwhile, news about the BSkyB deal was absent in the print edition of The New York Times on June 15, though the paper's DealBook blog had posted a story about the potential transaction the previous evening, crediting both the FT and the Telegraph with breaking the news. The omission from print seemed odd, given the deal's potential size, regulatory complications and the fact that the paper did run a story that day on two other News Corp. deals -- its acquisition of electronic reading platform Skiff LLC and its investment in Steven Brill's Journalism Online.

Maybe the BSkyB news was too U.K.-ish. Still, given the Journal's newfound determination to beat the Times at world, national and local reporting, it's surprising that the Times would so casually cede a big deal story to the Journal, not to mention the FT.

Did the Journal tiptoe around its new owner? Did the Times ignore a major deal from a man threatening an all-out war against it? Or was this just another hit-or-miss week in the world of deal reporting?

Back in May, The New York Times ran a breathless story by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story about how clients of Goldman, Sachs & Co. were beginning to question the conflicting roles the firm sometimes plays while serving them. Goldman's many hats "has left some clients feeling bruised or so wary that they have sometimes avoided doing business with the bank," the page-one piece intoned.

Well, never mind. In his DealBook column June 15, the Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin reported that "[m]ost of Goldman Sachs's big customers are not bolting." For Exhibit A, Sorkin rolled out General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey Immelt. "We trust them," the story quoted Immelt as saying. "People need to tone down the rhetoric around financial services and stop the populism and be adults." The piece doesn't say, however, that Immelt himself sits atop a mighty big financial services company -- GE Capital Corp., with about $600 billion in assets.

In any case, at least one reader agreed with Sorkin and not with Morgenson and Story -- none other than Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein. The Wall Street Journal on June 16 reported that Blankfein told a meeting of the firms' retired partners the previous day that "clients are standing behind the company." The Journal didn't elaborate on what details Blankfein provided to back up that claim. But if anyone questioned him, Blankfein could have said he read it in The New York Times. How convenient.

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Yvette Kantrow is executive editor of The Deal.