Let’s give credit to Bloomberg News for this at least: it isn’t trying to hide its capitulation to a conflict of interest and its abandonment of journalism ethics.
2,700 journalists working at Bloomberg L.P., the financial data company primarily owned by newly minted Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, were thus instructed in a memo sent by John Micklethwait, Bloomberg Editorial and Research’s editor in chief:
“We will write about virtually all aspects of this presidential contest in much the same way as we have done so far. We will describe who is winning and who is losing,. We will look at policies and their consequences. We will carry polls, we will interview candidates and we will track their campaigns, including [Michael Bloomberg’s] We have already assigned a reporter to follow his campaign (just as we did when Mike was in City Hall). And in the stories we write on the presidential contest, we will make clear that our owner is now a candidate.”
However, the memo went on to say, Bloomberg’s outlets, including Bloomberg Businessweek and several industry-specific sites, will not perform in-depth investigations of Bloomberg or any of his Democratic rivals.
Let’s be clear about what this policy means by looking at it from another angle. Bloomberg media outlets will only be seeking damaging news and creating critical “in-depth” analysis on one party’s candidate, that being the Republican party and its candidate, President Trump.. They will operate during the next year like Charles Foster Kane’s newspaper, the New York Daily Inquirer operated when the corrupt Orson Welles character was running for governor in “Citizen Kane.”
Clark Hoyt, who retired in 2015 as an editor and independent ombudsman at Bloomberg News, told reporters—not Bloomberg reporters, of course, who didn’t ask the question he answered, that the Bloomberg cable network journalists and viewers would be harmed by the company’s decision to avoid investigative campaign reporting on one side of the political divide, saying,
“Mike Bloomberg’s decision to run for president has put the fine news organization that bears his name in a near-impossible situation. As long as it answers up through the chain of command to the owner, there is a conflict that will undoubtedly have an impact on credibility. The ground rules that were announced Sunday appear to reduce Bloomberg journalists covering the presidential campaign to stenographers. They can’t investigate their boss or any of the other candidates he is running against. Their readers and viewers will have to turn elsewhere for aggressive, enterprising coverage. Not a good situation to be.”
Even that statement was misleading. The Bloomberg reporters can still “look for dirt” (I’m adopting the mainstream media’s current lexicon for “investigating actual wrongdoing” when it applies to Joe Biden) on one candidate: President Trump.Hoyt made another mistake. “Fine news organizations” never operate like this.
Last year, when he was musing a run, the former New York City mayor said, “I don’t want the reporters I’m paying to write a bad story about me. I don’t want them to be independent.”
Got it, Mike! By the way, did you know that Donald Trump is a dangerous autocrat and a threat to the freedom of the press?
The New York Times was notably uncritical in its news story about this development; predictable, since the Times announced in the midst of the 2017 Presidential campaign that it would jettison objectivity to try to ensure Donald Trump’s defeat, and they didn’t have the excuse that Hillary Clinton was their publisher. “The moment is fraught for one of the most prominent global newsrooms in the country, which now has to document the candidacy of its owner, one of the richest men in the world” muses the Times.
Fraught! What a weasel word. Let me be more precise: the moment is signature significance. No news outlet that is capable of operating with such open and shameless bias, or that will capitulate to its owner’s personal interests, can be trusted, nor should it ever have been trusted. Either journalists commit to ethical journalism all the time, or they are not ethical journalists. ‘Today we’re objective. pending further orders from the top’ is not a viable policy. Bloomberg reporters should have rejected the editor’s order, and threatened a walk-out. That, however, would have required some basic ethics alarms and a pre-existing respect for independence and objectivity.
An astute Ethics Alarms commenter suggested that this is a violation of federal election laws. I’m sure it would be, if Bloomberg owned hotels and President Trump was in the media business.
Ethics Alarms 
One set of laws and ethics with two entirely divergent methods of assessing legality and ethical behavior does two classes make. Eventually the second class catches on, and when possible elects someone who rejects the first class double standard. Then the fireworks begin. We are far from the grand finale in this all too real fireworks show.
Youre on fire with these zingers. Another great turn of phrase – I about lost my coffee.
“An astute Ethics Alarms commenter suggested that this is a violation of federal election laws. I’m sure it would be, if Bloomberg owned hotels and President Trump was in the media business.”
The dry contempt is palpable.
Indeed, and well deserved.
Aside from the presidential race which I have already commented on we have the issue of the potential post election manipulation of the markets via Bloomberg enterprises.
Does anyone believe if Bloomberg is elected only positive economic news will be forthcoming from his business news outlets and what prevents him from ordering changes in the software of his investment tools products to not reflect events that could result in market downturns. Buyers of these products drive the markets up and down . Bloomberg knows full well that “animal spirits” can cause irrational exhuberance or unbridled panic. If you think Trump having the nuclear codes is dangerous just wait until the purveyor or financial news and investment tools who has the power to decide what economic information is disseminated becomes president.
The statement by the editor makes clear Bloomberg enterprises will actively protect its owner and political interests
Fortunately Chris, Michael Bloomberg doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of even being the Dem nominee.
OB
I certainly hope you are right. I fear the likes of a Bloomberg more than I do AOC. Bloomberg has proven himself to be an autocratic politician. I don’t need his self righteous beliefs to decide what we all must do, think, eat, drink or smoke.
Chris, I really think Bloomberg is much too conservative to win the Democratic nomination. He’s a moderate. That just doesn’t fly any more in Democratic circles. The party has left Bloomberg and HRC in the dust as it’s raced to the far left. If Bloomberg was serious about winning a nomination, he’d run in a Republican primary as a Republican.
He would lose to Frosty the Snowman, and in a landslide.
I think he would lose, narrowly, to the iron statue inspired by Rocky Balboa.
For what reason is he entering that race then? Surely he must know that he doesn’t have a chance?
What makes any of these completely marginal candidates run for president? A heck of a question. I’m guessing it’s a combination of ego and large amounts of disposable income and a concomitant superabundance of free time.
The tin foil suggests that his entering the fray, along with the ROE now imposed on his news organizations, gives cover to the mainstream media for not investigating Dem candidates.
A neat sidestep of the FEC, no?
Posts here regularly introduce me to new vocabulary words. I had to lookup “qorking”.
Don’t change it. Define it and reuse!
qork (qorked,qorking),v.: To work while quaking in fear;; n. The act of anxious labor.
The Democrats qorked at Trump’s impeachment, for the polls were ominous.
Trump’s White House staff found the qork unbearable.
If federal election laws are so vague, how can they be constitutional?
The provisions of them that are typically enforced are not the vague provisions. If anyone tried to, for example, prosecute on something like the theory that information was “something of value” or that Trump paying off a mistress before he was elected were crimes, I suspect all or part of the law would be voided for vagueness.
It’s not that they’re vague, it’s that they only apply to Republicans.
bingo