Bloomberg News has landed in an unusual place: the front page of the New York Times, in an article saying Bloomberg pulled back on a controversial story to avoid angering China’s leaders. Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Matt Winkler denied it, but the Times ran the piece anyway.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Some stories are unstoppable, especially when they conform to prevailing beliefs about a company.
It’s not that the New York Times went out of its way to take a shot at Bloomberg News, one of its biggest rivals. (Ok, so that might have been a factor.) In fact, the Times publishes negative articles every day over the strong objections of CEOs. Come to think of it, so does Bloomberg. Matt Winkler should certainly know that.
There are many CEOs who can sympathize with Mr. Winkler’s plight. He believes the story isn’t true and is willing to say it on the record, but the reporter publishes it anyway. No spin, no explanation, just a flat denial – and it didn’t matter a bit. I can see Jamie Dimon nodding in agreement.
Isn’t the word of the top guy good enough? No, and it never was. In this case, having a senior executive quoted makes the story more newsworthy. Mr. Winkler might have been better advised not to comment at all. (An even better strategy would have been to say yes, the story was put on the back-burner once the Times broke a similar story.)
What’s telling is that apparently none of the Bloomberg sources who spoke to the Times changed their story, even after Mr. Winkler’s denial. His comment was simply a counterweight that balanced other sources in the story, rather than a knockout blow that would have given the editors pause and possibly spiked the piece.
So today Bloomberg finds itself in the awkward position of responding to other media who are now reporting on this, and issuing a statement condemning the Times article:
Winkler denied the story in the Times, and a Bloomberg News spokesman did the same when reached by TheWrap. “As we were very clear with the Times, it is absolutely false that we postponed these stories due to external pressure,” the company said in a statement. “We are disappointed that they chose to publish a piece that claims otherwise.”
A story sticks when it’s consistent with established beliefs. In this case, Bloomberg’s reputation as a savvy, profit-minded business and China’s willingness to play hardball with the media made this story plausible, even before the serious reporting started.
Bloomberg is known as a ravenous commercial enterprise and has achieved much success because of it. The idea they might bend to appease Chinese officials is conceivable – a view shared not just by outsiders but apparently by Bloomberg’s own writers, who felt angry enough about this episode to called the Times about it.
It’s interesting to wonder whether this would have been such a big story if Bloomberg’s terminal-peeping had not come to light. That story laid bare the tensions between the commercial and journalistic sides of the company and dented Bloomberg’s aura of invincibility. Even though Bloomberg handled the incident well, today’s coverage has echoes of that earlier story. It demonstrates how one scandal can lead the way to the next.