Lawsuit: Bloomberg censored stories about UAE to boost sales

Editors at Bloomberg News “censored” stories about the United Arab Emirates and pressured a reporter to reveal her sources in order for the company to boost its sales in the region, reports Kevin Dugan for Business Insider.

Dugan reports, “Nafeesa Syeed, a veteran national security reporter in the company’s Dubai and Washington, DC bureaus, claims that the hard-driving culture at Bloomberg L.P., the financial news and data company founded by former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, obscured boundaries between the company’s news reporters and sales teams.

“Syeed ‘noticed stories appeared to be censored, or … overly deferential to the U.A.E. government,’ Syeed claims in a suit filed in Manhattan state court.

“Syeed’s suit — which also names editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, his predecessor Matthew Winkler, Chief Content Officer Marty Schenker, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief Reto Gregori — alleges that Bloomberg was toxic work environment and that she was passed over for promotion and ‘demeaned’ as a woman of Southeast Asian descent in a company largely made up of white men.”

Read more here. A Bloomberg spokesman says it has no record of an internal complaint.

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.