When CNN is calling Bloomberg News out for their political bias against Donald Trump, you can be sure that Michael Bloomberg has really taken things a bit too far. On Brian Stetler's show, no less, two CNN panelists eviscerated Michael Bloomberg for holding his reporters in contempt and abdicating journalistic integrity, and they questioned Micahel Bloomberg's ability to withstand criticism as president when he can't even tolerate it from his own news company.
After Michael Bloomberg officially decided to run for president, a memo was sent out to journalists at Bloomberg News informing the reporters that the news agency will not be investigating Michael Bloomberg or any of the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Instead, the memo instructed all reporters to focus exclusively on investigating Donald Trump.
In a recent interview on CBS, Bloomberg defended his decision to turn his company into an opposition research firm for the Democratic Party. Bloomberg dismissed his reporters' concerns about journalistic integrity, saying they will simply "have to learn to live with some things" and reminded his employees that they receive a paycheck "from the company that I started."
This was too much, even for CNN.
"I think Bloomberg, whose default mode seems to be contempt, is doing an enormous disservice by including the journalists who work for him within that scope of contempt," Irin Carmon told CNN host Brian Stetler. "They are people who have not been known for taking any particular partisan point of view, who got into this to report on the news, and by muzzling them and rendering Bloomberg News a partisan organization that only reports on Donald Trump, he's doing them a real disservice and just because they get a paycheck does not mean they should abdicate their journalistic freedom. I feel terrible for the legitimate journalists who are at Bloomberg who are now basically cordoned off and, to be honest, I think the Trump campaign makes a legitimate point. If they're being told you can only investigate one side, that's not journalism."
Olivia Nuzzi, the other CNN commentator on the panel, said "It's an oppo shop. It's not journalism."
"If you're only investigating one side then that's not a journalistic enterprise," Nuzzi concluded. "There are excellent reporters at Bloomberg. They have excellent reporters out in the field every day covering all sorts of things, and I think this is a tragedy for them, and I think it's really embarrassing for Mike Bloomberg. If you can't handle the criticism from your own newsroom, then how are you going to handle any other aspect of running for president or god forbid being president?"
Irin Carmon also pointed out that other news organizations routinely investigate their owners and parent companies.
"I just want to say that news organizations routinely cover their owners," Carmon said. "The idea that it is impossible for Bloomberg to investigate Mike Bloomberg, that is out of the norm of legitimate news organizations which routinely cover their parent organizations and their owners."
To be fair, CNN President Jeff Zucker was similarly caught by Project Veritas directing his employees to focus on the impeachment of President Trump, so it's a lot like the pot calling the kettle black here. All these mainstream news outlets unfairly attack the president. Bloomberg News was just dumb enough to put its political biases down in writing.