Thirty years ago this month, New York financial data tycoon Michael Bloomberg telephoned Wall Street Journal writer Matthew Winkler and asked: ‘What would it take to get into the news business?’
Knowing that Bloomberg had no experience in journalism, Winkler presented him with a hypothetical ethical dilemma:
‘You have just published a story that says the chairman of your biggest customer has taken $5 million from the corporate till,’ he said. ‘He is with his secretary at a Rio de Janeiro resort, and the secretary’s spurned boyfriend calls to tip you off. You get an independent verification that the story is true. Then the phone rings. The customer’s public-relations person says, “Kill the story or we will return all the terminals we currently rent from you.’”
Winkler then asked Bloomberg a simple question: ‘What would you do?”
Bloomberg didn’t hesitate.
‘Go with the story!’ he replied.
Winkler later cited this as the ‘deciding moment’ he chose to help Bloomberg build a news organization.
It was an inspired decision.
Bloomberg News is now one of the biggest and most powerful news agencies on the planet.
It boasts 2,300 journalists in 72 countries and 146 bureaus worldwide and has developed a reputation for important impartial journalism.
In the past four years, it has intensively reported on, and aggressively investigated, first Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and now his presidency – the vast majority of its Trump coverage being negative.
Like many US mainstream media organizations, Bloomberg News quickly realized that relentless Trump-bashing is a big money-spinner.
But behind this clear editorial strategy lies an intriguing personal back-story.
Until Trump ran for president in 2015, he and Michael Bloomberg were good friends.
The two most famous billionaires in New York played golf together, frequently rubbed shoulders on the same elite Manhattan social scene, and worked professionally on common projects – most notably when Trump delivered a luxury golf course on a discarded municipal waste site in the Bronx, enabling Bloomberg to take credit for it just before he left office as New York mayor.
Not to mention this: Warning! Mayor Bloomberg Is A Radical Nanny-Stater.
The big political news yesterday was former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg formally launching a campaign bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and initiating a $30 million television advertising campaign. Media reports call Bloomberg a policy moderate. He’s not. As mayor Bloomberg was a radical nanny-stater, he created regulations to control aspects of people’s lives from what they ate, to how they nursed their newborn babies, how they listened to music, and more.
He did get the city council to create a reasonable regulation, a two-term limit for NYC elected officials. But nanny-Bloomberg made one exception—himself.
Michael Bloomberg was not a nanny-stater like most Democrats are, he was much worse– as NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg was a tyrant who thought he had the right to tell citizens how to live their lives. And he didn’t stop after he left office, Bloomberg has been trying to take away Americans’ right to bear arms.
h/t ED