A rose by any other name ... But yes, it has been a while.
The reason the cash generation is vital is because the buyer of a business wants to be repaid, and the source of the repayment is not profits, it's cash.
In the case of this thread, if you are expecting a dividend, you want to see the business generating enough cash to pay its debt obligations and invest for the future along with the dividend.
One really needs to see all three financial statements - income, balance sheet, cash flow - and then see how they change from one period to the next.
I don't think modern financial statements for most corporations are fraudulent or misrepresented. Most are legitimate efforts to take a snapshot in time of something that is big and dynamic. Exception to this are financial statements for the largest banks, which are IMHO undecipherable, mostly mountains of assumed valuations and predicted behavior.