Bloomberg reporters express concern about covering politics if founder runs

Bloomberg News reporters have expressed concern about how its political news team would cover its founder’s potential run for president — and whether they would be allowed to cover it at all, reports Steven Perlberg of BuzzFeed News.

Perlberg writes, “The politics team, in particular, has been rankled by what Bloomberg said about how in-house political reporters should handle his potential campaign (not at all).

“‘Quite honestly, I don’t want all the reporters I’m paying to write a bad story about me,’ Bloomberg said through laughter during the interview. One serious option for handling his campaign, he said, would be to ‘not cover politics at all,’ ceding all political coverage to other outlets’ wire stories.

“The other possibility would be a more conventional approach: attaching a boilerplate explanation to all political stories that mention the boss. ‘You can cover us, and anytime say that Mike Bloomberg is the owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent of this radio station, television station, newswire, magazine, internet site, whatever the case may be,’ Bloomberg said in the interview.

“Reporters in the Bloomberg newsroom, which currently features news-breaking political reporters, are largely unsure of what to make of the comments. There has been no wider communication from top editors about the remarks. ‘A lot of people are confused and don’t really know what to expect in the next two years,’ said one Bloomberg News staffer.”

Read more here.