"General Electric, the nation's largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion." (Emphasis is mine.)

From the Columbia Journalism Review:

"The New York Times unloads a fantastic piece of reporting on General Electric and taxes this morning. It's an ugly portrait of GE and the political system it's helped create. David Kocieniewski zeroes in on GE's tax avoidance, which is a proud corporate strategy at Obama appointee Jeff Immelt's company, which earned $14.2 billion globally last year but paid no taxes in the U.S. It actually had a negative U.S. tax rate last year, since it got a $3.2 billion American tax benefit. Over the last five years, GE made $26 billion in what it says were American profits, but got the IRS to pay it $4.1 billion total (UPDATE: I should clarify that this is an accounting benefit, not an actual cash payment). Astonishing." (Emphasis is mine.)"

Now, let's look at your source, ProPublica (from which CNN posted this story). I read it in its entirety, and this part stood out for me:

"After repeated conversations with GE -- remember, we've been working on this story too -- we can finally give you reasonably definitive answers. The company says that it's not getting any refund for 2010 -- validating Outslay's analysis. Its 2010 tax situation? "We expect to have a small U.S. income tax liability for 2010," GE chief spokesman Gary Sheffer told us. How big is small? GE declined to say. The number is unlikely to ever be disclosed unless GE goes public with it, or is forced to do so."

In other words, after so much harumphing, it turns out that ProPublica's primary source for its contention that the New York Times got the story wrong about General Electric was -- drum roll, please -- none other than GE itself. What a surprise.

This isn't the only time ProPublica has found itself in the weeds. More recently in December 2011, it waded into the California redistricting process, and posted a story about supposed interference in that process by the California Democratic congressional delegation. Unfortunately, it offered so many specious contentions and relied on so many GOP sources for its information that it got a smackdown from Robert Cruikshank over at the political blog Calitics and California Progress Report, who said the following:

"From what I can tell, ProPublica is just another one of these supposedly 'independent' news sites that actually gets stories fundamentally wrong because they are interested in making everyone look bad and finding 'evidence' of wrongdoing even if no such evidence exists. Rather than tell their readers the truth - that Republicans were doomed to lose out in any fair redistricting process and that they are now whining about it to anyone who will listen - they are misleading their readers by concocting a story in an effort to score cheap journalistic points. One of the primary reasons blogging exists is because for media outlets like ProPublica, telling the truth is no longer valued." (Emphasis is mine.)

For these reasons, I'm going to stand by my statements and original contention about GE and its taxes.