Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bloomberg’s Winkler: Error is inexcusable

Bloomberg editor in chief Matt Winkler writes that the error allowing the news service’s journalists to see information about its clients on its terminals is “inexcusable.”

Winkler writes, “As we’ve grown, and as data privacy has become a central concern to our clients, we should go above and beyond in protecting data, especially when we have even the appearance of impropriety. And that’s why we’ve made these recent changes to what reporters can access.

“This leads to a second point lost in much of this weekend’s conversation: The protection of important customer data has been essential at Bloomberg since our founding more than 30 years ago. We have never compromised the integrity of that data in our reporting.

“At no time did reporters have access to trading, portfolio, monitor, blotter or other related systems. Nor did they have access to clients’ messages to one another. They couldn’t see the stories that clients were reading or the securities clients might be looking at.

“Like all other Bloomberg employees, our reporters, upon hiring, enter into a confidentiality agreement that strictly prohibits them from discussing non-public Bloomberg documents and proprietary information about the company and its clients in their reporting.”

Read more here.

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.

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Worden Report says:
May 14, 2013 at 12:35 am
In http://www.thewordenreport.blogspot.com/2013/05/bloomberg-news-speed-journalists.html, I argue that breaking the firewall to exploit the conflict of interest at the expense of the subscribers is unethical. Less obvious, relying on the firewall was also unethical, not to mention negligent. We need to take structural conflicts of interest in business and government more seriously.