Kiely: Why I quit Bloomberg News

Kathy Kiely, who resigned this week from Bloomberg News after she decided that the news organization couldn’t adequately cover a presidential run by its owner, writes about her decision for the Washington Post.

Kiely writes, “When you are talking about an individual bankroller with a known set of personal preferences, business interests and political agenda, the dilemma becomes much more acute.

“All the more reason to tackle it. We live in an era in which the globalization of the economy and the consolidation of wealth have created a new elite class of trans-national, extra-territorial citizens whose finances and agendas are increasingly opaque and hard to regulate. It has created a sense of disentitlement and disenfranchisement that has become a driving issue not only in the U.S. presidential election but also in the politics of other nations. If this new elite controls the media watchdogs, it’s only going to deepen the cynicism eating away at civic society.

“We should tip our hats to megawealthy individuals or organizations who, instead of hoarding their vast assets, use them to add to or preserve democracy’s soapboxes — as Ted Turner did with CNN, or Gannett’s Al Neuharth did with USA Today, or Bezos did rescuing this newspaper or Bloomberg did with his eponymous news service. But why create or preserve those jobs and then not let people do them the right way? Even if the brave new media moguls are too hard-nosed to see their loss-leaders as public trusts, they should understand this:  Nothing enhances a media brand like credibility.”

Read more here.