Bloomberg’s coverage of Trump draws attention

Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine writes about whether Michael Bloomberg will run for president and his relationship with Republican front-runner Donald Trump, including how Bloomberg’s news organization covers Trump’s business operation.

Sherman writes, “With 80 percent of Bloomberg LP’s revenues generated by terminal sales mostly to financial firms, Bloomberg instructed Micklethwait to undo some of Doctoroff’s initiatives and focus on the core product of business news for business people. This also meant trying not to alienate Wall Street. ‘If you are not intrigued by how people make money, are inclined to sneer at those who are good at it, or yearn to practice ‘gotcha journalism’ on investment bankers simply because they’ve chosen to be bankers, Bloomberg is probably the wrong place for you,’ Micklethwait wrote in a staff memo.

“Those who violated the new ethos quickly attracted Bloomberg’s ire. Last year, he confronted Bloomberg View editor David Shipley after Bloomberg received a call from his friend John Paulson, the hedge-fund billionaire, who was angry about a column. ‘Mike was furious,’ a Bloomberg journalist told me. He yelled, ‘I don’t like personal attacks on people! This is not who we are!’ ’

“Last spring, Trump wrote a scathing letter complaining about negative coverage of him by Bloomberg Politics and had it hand-delivered to Bloomberg’s Upper East Side townhouse. Afterward, said one high-level Bloomberg source, Bloomberg issued an edict to ensure journalists didn’t write articles that included attacks on Trump. ‘If you were putting Donald Trump in your piece, you would get special scrutiny,’ the source says. Even a relatively mild reference to ‘P. T. Barnum’ was cut.

Read more here. Bloomberg spokesman Ty Trippet has tweeted that there is no edict about Trump coverage at the news organization, pointing to this article.