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The 24/7 Wall St./Flame Index: April 5 The Companies With The Most Bad News

Note: The Flame Index scans thousands of news sites 24 hours per day and ranks companies getting the most negative press right now. The Flame Index Media Analysis Algorithm crunches the data for an up-to-the-minute ranking of the hardest-hit companies.The Flame Index started as a research tool in 2008 at the NY Innovation Design Lab (nyidlab). It was used as a general metric to evaluate companies and their risk in the media. Publicly traded Fortune 500 companies are used as a measure to calculate an overall market of negative news and the companies are ranked within that market

Rank Company Ticker Score Change in Rank Comments
1 Southwest Airlines LUV 58.047 0 Holes in planes
2 Massey Energy MEE 52.169 +14 More mining liability
3 Transocean Ltd RIG 51.796 +1 Stupid safety bonuses for management after Deepwater
4 Kroger KR 44.957 -1 High prices of groceries
5 Johnson & Johnson JNJ 41.317 +2 Market concern about OTC drug recalls
6 Best Buy BBY 38.966 +9 Huge data breach reaches its customers
7 Google GOOG 36.728 -5 New CEO rattles market
8 BP BP 35.778 +3 Gulf drilling rumor not true.
9 Capital One Financial COF 33.958 +1 Epsilon data breach hits customers
10 Toyota Motor Corporation TM 33.562 -1 No part, US plants close
14 General Dynamics GD 27.209 +608 Gulfstream jet crashes in test
16 National Semiconductor NSM 26.124 +471 Bought out by Texas Instruments
20 AirTran Holdings AAI 25.423 +231 Gets good marks for service
21 Symantec SYMC 24.779 +81 More data breaches make services more valuable. Predicts that world of online security will get more dangerous
25 Alliance Data Systems ADS 23.162 +141 Data breach hits Alliance, too.

Data and ranking provided by the Flame Index.

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