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tradition,” but that places
an undeserved luster on the
practice — traditions gener-
ally involve guideposts to be
honored or respected, not
dodges to evade uncomfort-
able disclosures.
Bluntly put, if
Bloomberg is planning to be
a serious presidential candi-
date, he needs to reverse
this decision on coverage,
depart the news business
entirely, or at least put his
company, Bloomberg LP, in
a blind trust, enabling its
reporters to cover
Bloomberg the candidate
without fear of reprisal from
him. The memo, released
soon after Michael
Bloomberg formally an-
nounced his presidential
candidacy Sunday via a
video, observes that “no
previous presidential candi-
date has owned a journalis-
tic organization of this size.”
Bloomberg’s news footprint
in Washington is extensive
— not only through its gen-
eral news output, but also
such specialized informa-
tion services as Bloomberg
National Affairs, Bloomberg
Law, Bloomberg Govern-
ment and Bloomberg Envi-
ronment.
Though Micklethwait
acknowledged that this
places extraordinary re-
sponsibilities on his news-
room, he tried to put the
best face on the coverage
policy. His memo states that
the news organization “will
write about virtually all
aspects of this presidential
contest in much the same
way as we have done so far,”
but it casts its current prac-
tice in oddly limited terms:
describing “who is winning
and who is losing,” examin-
ing policies, carrying polls,
interviewing candidates.
The memo says that “if
other credible journalistic
institutions publish inves-
tigative work on Mike or the
other Democratic candi-
dates,” Bloomberg News
“will either publish those
articles in full, or summarize
them for our readers — and
we will not hide them.”
But almost all of that is
reactive, not proactive. It
leaves many imponder-
ables, including how aggres-
sive Bloomberg reporters
will be in interviews of can-
didate Bloomberg, and
whether they may feel con-
strained to go easy on the
rival candidates to maintain
balance with their coverage
of their boss.
The core of the
Bloomberg policy is a near-
complete shutdown of edi-
torial commentary on the
presidential election. Sev-
eral members of the organi-
zation’s editorial board will
take a leave of absence and
join the campaign. The
board itself is being sus-
pended, “so there will be no
unsigned editorials.” Indi-
vidual columnists will con-
tinue to write, and op-eds
from outsiders accepted,
“although not op-eds on the
election.” Obviously that
punches a big hole in the
analytical component of
Bloomberg News.
The staff memo says that
Bloomberg News will “con-
tinue to investigate the
Trump administration, as
the government of the day.”
If Michael Bloomberg and
Donald Trump end up
running against each other
in the general election,
however, “we will reassess
how we do that.”
As it happens, the
Bloomberg policy raises
questions about Michael
Bloomberg’s relationship
with his own business em-
pire similar to those that
persist about Trump and
the Trump Organization.
(Bloomberg News says the
policy about coverage is
Micklethwait’s initiative,
not Michael Bloomberg’s.
But he’s the boss and he
hasn’t, as of this writing,
disavowed it.)
Although Trump
pledged to remove himself
from the organization and
leave it in the hands of his
children once he became
president, evidence is rife
that he may have retained
significant control and
remains a beneficiary of the
business. That has led to
accusations that he is in
violation of constitutional
“emolument” clauses, which
forbid the president and
other government officials
from receiving pay or ben-
efits outside their official
compensation.
Michael Bloomberg’s
strictures about how he is
covered leave open the
question of his continuing
control over the business
enterprise he founded,
through which he has
amassed a fortune esti-
mated at $54 billion. The
question persisted during
his three terms as mayor of
New York from 2002 to 2013.
Bloomberg News, a leading
outlet on national and inter-
national news, was faulted
for less than proactive
reporting of its and its own-
er’s hometown.
During his first mayoral
campaign Bloomberg re-
fused to release his personal
income tax returns — much
as President Trump has
refused to release his own.
As mayor, Bloomberg al-
lowed reporters to view
redacted versions. It isn’t
clear how he’ll manage the
long-term expectations,
flouted only by Trump, that
presidential candidates
reveal their taxes.
Michael Bloomberg
departed the management
of Bloomberg LP when he
became mayor, but didn’t
divest himself of the com-
pany and returned to its
management after the end
of his mayoral tenure. He
has said he would divest the
company if he became presi-
dent.
Bloomberg founded his
company as a specialized
financial service for securi-
ties and derivatives traders;
eventually it expanded into
the fields of financial and
national news. In 2009, he
acquired BusinessWeek and
added it to his news empire.
Micklethwait’s memo points
to the enduring difficulties
for news organizations
trying to cover their owners,
especially when those own-
ers are rich or politically
active.
American history is
devoid of edifying guide-
lines. Before Bloomberg,
arguably the most politi-
cally active news tycoon (at
least in front of the curtain,
not behind the scenes) was
William Randolph Hearst,
who ran for the Democraticpresidential nomination in
1904, for New York mayor in
1905 and 1909 and New York
governor in 1906.
As historian Jonathan
Zimmerman recalled last
year, Hearst unabashedly
exploited his newspaper
empire to pump up his
campaigns, running head-
lines such as “BANK PRES-
IDENT TELLS WHY HE IS
FOR HEARST” or “A
HEARST VICTORY! CRY
POLICEMEN’S WIVES.”
None of this yielded
electoral success, as Hearst
lost every one of those races.
(Though he had been
elected to Congress as a
Democrat in 1902 and 1904.)
Hearst’s record was lam-
pooned in Orson Welles’
classic film “Citizen Kane,”
which shows the title char-
acter’s deputies preparing a
front-page headline attrib-
uting their boss’ electoral
loss to “FRAUD AT
POLLS!”
The difficulties extend
beyond electoral politics.
News organizations with
influential owners take
diverse approaches, beyond
routinely reporting their
owners’ interests when a
news story pertaining to
them breaks.
The Washington Post,
which was acquired in 2013
by Jeff Bezos, the founder
and chief executive of Ama-
zon.com, hasn’t shied away
from covering Bezos’ com-
pany.
On Nov. 14, for example,
the newspaper reported on
the availability of counter-
feit goods on Amazon’s sales
platform and observed that
the company “is failing to
stanch the flow of dubious
goods even with obvious
examples of knockoffs.”
Nor has the Post down-
played its investigative
reporting on President
Trump, even though that
has made Bezos and Ama-
zon a Trump target, pos-
sibly resulting in Amazon’s
loss to Microsoft in bidding
for a $10-billion defense
contract. (Amazon is chal-
lenging the contract award
in court.)
The Wall Street Journal,
which was acquired in 2007
by international news mag-
nate Rupert Murdoch, has
covered Murdoch’s overseas
legal troubles extensively,
though the most notable
scandals, which involved
alleged illegal behavior by
Murdoch newspapers, were
exposed by non-Murdoch
news organizations and
have become the topics of
official proceedings that are
hard to ignore.
The Times has covered
investigative reports from
other news organizations
about the business dealingsof its owner, Patrick Soon-
Shiong, dating to when
Soon-Shiong was a major
shareholder in Tronc, then
the newspaper’s parent
corporation. Since Soon-Shiong became full owner of
The Times and the San
Diego Union-Tribune last
year, The Times has covered
the bankruptcy of a Cali-
fornia hospital chain he had
been involved with, and the
Union-Tribute has written
on other accusations perti-
nent to his business
dealings.
Compared with many
competitors, the approach
of Bloomberg News to cov-
ering its proprietor has been
remarkably hands-off.
The company’s formal
guidebook states,
“Bloomberg Editorial
doesn’t originate stories
about the company.” That
rule applies even to the
Bloomberg Billionaires
Index, which doesn’t men-
tion the company’s owner.
The candidate himself
has articulated personal
sensitivity to how he’s cov-
ered. “Quite honestly, I
don’t want the reporters I’m
paying to write a bad story
about me,” Bloomberg told
an Iowa radio station during
an exploratory swing
through that state in 2018. “I
don’t want them to be inde-
pendent.”
Michael Bloomberg
explained to the Iowa sta-
tion that “we’ve always had
a policy of ‘we don’t cover
ourselves’ ... I believe in my
heart of hearts that you
can’t be independent, and
nobody’s going to believethat you’re independent.”
That’s too easy an out,
and it’s contradicted in
Micklethwait’s own memo,
in which he says: “In jour-
nalism you ‘show’ your
virtue, you don’t ‘tell’ it. You
prove your independence by
what you write and broad-
cast, rather than by pro-
claiming the details in ad-
vance.”
The rules laid down by
Bloomberg’s editor-in -chief
suggest that the enterprise
doesn’t trust its own report-
ers and editors, who are
some of the best in the busi-
ness, to show their inde-
pendence.
The policy takes one of
the nation’s largest news-
gathering operations func-
tionally out of the business
of covering politics during
what may be the most im-
portant presidential elec-
tion in a century.
In declaring his candi-
dacy Sunday, Michael
Bloomberg presented him-
self as something of a savior
of American democracy, the
indispensable man. But his
campaign began with the
undermining of one of
democracy’s indispensable
pillars.Keep up to date with
Michael Hiltzik. Follow
@hiltzikm on Twitter, see
his Facebook page, or email
michael.hiltzik
@latimes.com.Abdication of media responsibility
IN “CITIZEN KANE,” the newspaper owned by the title character, based on
William Randolph Hearst, had its own spin for him losing an election.Warner Home Video[Hiltzik, from C1]