Yesterday’s attention-grabbing headline — “Accounting Firms That Missed Fraud at Madoff May Be Liable” — on the front page of the Journal’s Money & Investing section is a bit misleading.

The article reports that the numerous public accounting firms that inspected the financial statements of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and the investment funds that poured money into the company “could now be legally vulnerable to claims that they should have uncovered red flags.”

The article identifies accounting firms both tiny (a one-person firm) and large (KPMG LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers) are mentioned in connection with audits that occurred at Madoff’s firm or “feeder funds.” (Both firms defend their positions in the piece.)

Is this news? Not really.

Other publications, including Time and The New York Times, asked two months ago if auditors might be liable in the Madoff fraud (the same question today’s WSJ article asks).

What’s more interesting was the coverage of the topic elsewhere in the Journal yesterday. The law blog contains anonymous comments from readers that every accounting firm’s executives and PR person should read. Why? Because they cover the gamut of public perceptions (and misperceptions) about the public accounting industry:

“I’m so tired of the incompetence of these accounting/auditing firms,” writes one reader. “These firms get paid large sums of money for THIS VERY REASON and yet they are incapable of discovering any fraud until it’s way too late. I say sue the crap out of them!

“The accounting/auditing firms are working for their clients; they are not IRS agents,” notes another reader. “Therefore they are free to produce some ‘esoteric’ accounting results that make their clients look good.” ###