In a rare instance of a mainstream news outlet putting their bias political-reporting guidelines down on paper, Bloomberg News has just issued new rules barring their reporters from investigating any of the Democratic candidates while encouraging them to continue their investigations of Donald Trump.
On Sunday, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg finally entered the presidential race after flirting with the decision for the past few weeks. Following Bloomberg's official entry into the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait sent a note to staff members informing them that Bloomberg News will continue its tradition of not investigating Michael Bloomberg and will now be extending that policy to all the Democratic candidates seeking the party's nomination.
"We will continue our tradition of not investigating Mike (and his family and foundation) and we will extend the same policy to his rivals in the Democratic primaries. We cannot treat Mike's Democratic competitors differently from him," wrote Micklethwait.
How does the news agency justify protecting Bloomberg's Democratic competitors but not his Republican competitors? They don't.
"For the moment, our P&I team will continue to investigate the Trump administration, as the government of the day," Micklethwait continues. "If Mike is chosen as the Democratic presidential candidate (and Donald Trump emerges as the Republican one), we will reassess how we do that."
So the biased news agency finally has a reason to protect Democrats while attacking Republicans. But what about The Washington Post owned by billionaire Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos? Bezos called Michael Bloomberg and encouraged him to run for president.
Micklethwait admits in the note that the editorial section of Bloomberg News has reflected the owner's views.
"The place where Mike has had the most contact with Editorial is Bloomberg Opinion: our editorials have reflected his views," Micklethwait reveals.
Micklethwait goes on to say that members of the board will be leaving the news agency to work on the Bloomberg campaign.
I'm sure The Washington Post editorials reflect Bezos' views, too. Maybe The Post just isn't dumb enough to put their biased political rules down in writing.
Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait just sent this note to staffers: "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..." pic.twitter.com/RvfvpsZgDV
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 24, 2019