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Warren Buffett: The Biggest Sin in Journalism

Jeff Cunningham
8 min readDec 14, 2019

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(photo: Kristin Cunningham)

January 26, 2015

It turned out to be an exceptional 40-degree day in January in Omaha, Nebraska. The locals said the tourism bureau was playing games. I was here to interview Warren Buffett, so it didn’t matter. It was going to be a great day. After our plane landed, the video crew, my co-producer (and wife, thankfully), and I headed on over to meet him at Berkshire Hathaway headquarters. The ride from the airport gave me time to ponder the Buffett myth — one part wealth and the second version, old-world and old fashioned virtue. I was hoping to find out which was the real Warren Buffett as we got off at the 8th floor of his inner sanctum.

The average chief executive holds court in an office the size of a tennis court. Buffett’s was more like a large closet by comparison. He walked us down the corridor, past the display case filled with memorabilia like Shaq’s sneakers and old campaign buttons of Congressman Howard Buffett (his father). We walked by the painting of Buffett and his long time partner, Charlie Munger, that you see next to this paragraph. I commissioned it for the magazine I owned at the time and subsequently gave it to Buffett, which is why it now…

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Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham

Written by Jeff Cunningham

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