TV anchor Ruhle’s relationship with company executive questioned

Stephanie Ruhle

Khadeeja Safdar of The Wall Street Journal examines the relationship between MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle and Under Armour executive Kevin Plank, noting litigation about her messages to him when she was at Bloomberg Television.

Safdar writes, “Plank and Ruhle corresponded regularly and at all hours, according to the documents. In 2016, Plank sent Ruhle what he described as a secret recording he made of a conversation he just had with another top executive at Under Armour. Earlier that year, the then-Bloomberg anchor advised Under Armour to give internal data to Bloomberg’s competitors to manage negative publicity, the court documents show.”

She later writes, “A federal judge in New York on Friday denied a request by the shareholders to compel Bloomberg to provide Ruhle’s emails, saying they were protected by reporter’s privilege. ‘The personal relationship between Ruhle and Plank did not mean that Ruhle was not acting as a journalist with respect to her dealings with Under Armour,’ the judge wrote.

“Spokeswomen for Bloomberg News and MSNBC declined to comment. Ruhle worked at Bloomberg from 2011 to March 2016 and has worked since 2016 at MSNBC, according to her LinkedIn profile.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.