Bloomberg News: We won’t investigate Mike during presidential campaign
Bloomberg News will report on Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign, though will not investigate the candidate or his Democratic rivals, the company’s top editor told staff on Sunday.
“We will write about virtually all aspects of this presidential contest in much the same way as we have done so far,” Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait told staff in a Sunday memo. “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 Mike’s.”
Micklethwait also said that some of the news organization’s opinion and editorial writers would take a leave to join the campaign.
Bloomberg News has struggled in the past with reporting on the political ambitions of its billionaire owner, whose personal life and wealth the newsroom has long avoided covering during both his business career and in three terms as New York mayor.
A former political editor, Kathy Kiely, quit in 2016 over concerns that the newsroom wasn’t aggressively covering Bloomberg’s flirtation with running for president, which he ended up not doing. Bloomberg raised concerns in the newsroom by telling Radio Iowa last year that he might sell his company or stop political coverage if he got in the race.
The company did not comment earlier this month on its coverage plans as Bloomberg began signaling that he was entering the 2020 Democratic primary, but Micklethwait addressed several news and opinion issues on Sunday morning as its owner made it official.
“So Mike is running,” Micklethwait began the note.
“There is no point in trying to claim that covering this presidential campaign will be easy for a newsroom that has built up its reputation for independence in part by not writing about ourselves (and very rarely about our direct competitors),” he continued. “No previous presidential candidate has owned a journalistic organization of this size. We have electoral laws to follow — to do with both balance and opinion. We will certainly obey them, but I think we need to do more than just that — and I believe we can.”
Although Bloomberg News covered Bloomberg’s words and actions while he was mayor, the newsroom did not initiate investigations on him, a policy the global media company — which employs roughly 2,700 journalists and analysts — will continue as he runs for president and will also extend to the rest of the Democratic field.
“We cannot treat Mike’s Democratic competitors differently from him,” Micklethwait wrote. “If other credible journalistic institutions publish investigative work on Mike or the other Democratic candidates, we will either publish those articles in full, or summarize them for our readers — and we will not hide them.”
For now, the editor said, reporters will “continue to investigate the Trump administration, as the government of the day,” a policy that will be reassessed if Bloomberg becomes the Democratic nominee.
A major shift at Bloomberg will take place on the opinion side, with senior executive editor David Shipley, executive editor Timothy O’Brien and some members of the editorial board taking leave to join the campaign.
“We will suspend the Board, so there will be no unsigned editorials,” Micklethwait wrote. “Our columnists, who produce the majority of Bloomberg Opinion’s content, will continue to speak for themselves, and we will continue to take some op-ed articles from outsiders (although not op-eds on the election).”
Micklethwait said Chief Content Officer Marty Schenker would “take special responsibility for overseeing our news coverage” of Bloomberg and his Democratic rivals and respond to questions that arise.
“I think this is a structure that can cope with many eventualities,” he wrote. “No doubt, many of you are already thinking of possible complexities that may arise. My response is: let’s get back to work. We can spend a long time debating ‘what ifs.’ I would rather that we got on with the journalism and let that speak for itself. So write, blog, broadcast — and the rest will take care of itself.”
