Bloomberg Suppresses China Story, Suspends Reporter

If anyone needs a reminder of how the MSM is willing to bury stories for monetary or political expediency one look at Bloomberg's recent actions should be a not so subtle jog to the memory.

Bloomberg News Suspends Reporter Whose Article on China Was Not Published

BEIJING — A reporter for Bloomberg News who worked on an unpublished article about China, which employees for the company said had been killed for political reasons by top Bloomberg editors, was suspended last week by managers. The reporter, Michael Forsythe, was based in Hong Kong and has written award-winning investigative articles on China.

The move came days after several news outlets, including The New York Times, published reports quoting unnamed Bloomberg employees saying that top editors, led by Matthew Winkler, the editor in chief, decided in late October not to publish an investigative article because of fears that Bloomberg would be expelled from China.

Mr. Winkler defended his decision by comparing it to the self-censorship by foreign news bureaus trying to preserve their ability to report inside Nazi-era Germany, according to the Bloomberg employees familiar with the discussion. “He said, ‘If we run the story, we’ll be kicked out of China,’ ” one employee said.

Mr. Forsythe was a lead reporter on the article about the Xi family and other articles in the 2012 “Revolution to Riches” series, which received a George Polk Award and awards from the Asia Society, the Overseas Press Club and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

If you're wondering what could have prompted the suspension of the award winning reporter Michael Forsythe the answer appears quite obvious. Political pressure followed by monetary punishment which seems to be SOP for today's elite, the powerful and connected political families.

Bloomberg L.P., the parent company of Bloomberg News, receives much of its revenue from selling subscriptions for its financial-information terminals. After Bloomberg News published an article in June 2012 on the family wealth of Xi Jinping, at that time the incoming Communist Party chief, sales of Bloomberg terminals in China slowed, as officials ordered state enterprises not to subscribe. Officials also blocked Bloomberg’s website on Chinese servers, and the company has been unable to get residency visas for new journalists.

reply to post by Bassago


Good find. S&F. This is an excellent example of a specific type of "filter" that is prevalent among media sources owned by conglomerates.

reply to post by Bassago


Initially I thought I saw both sides of this one.

As a news consumer and citizen of the world, I absolutely felt cheated not to be able to see the story.

But in thinking about it from Bloomberg's perspective, I understood why they felt they had to maintain a presence in China.

But then I swung back towards my first line of thinking. If Bloomberg can report on nothing but pablum coming out of China, then what good are they to us? They are shirking their responsibility and not doing their jobs as a news organization by killing this story (assuming it's factually correct) and punishing the reporter.

So I guess Bloomberg is not a real news organization. With this in mind, I don't know what they are...besides greedy & spineless obviously.

To be fair Bloomberg is by no means the only media outlet doing this. I suppose it's ironic this article was put out by the NY Times who themselves are just as guilty. The Washington Post is complicit as well in the suppression of news worthy information. It just goes on and on.

n 2011, the New York Times along with numerous other US media outlets learned that the American arrested in Pakistan for having shot and killed two Pakistanis, Raymond Davis, was not - as President Obama falsely claimed - "our diplomat", but was a CIA agent and former Blackwater contractor. Not only did the NYT conceal this fact, but it repeatedly and uncritically printed claims from Obama and other officials about Davis' status which it knew to be false.

In 2005 The Washington Post's Dana Priest, reported that the CIA was maintaining a network of secret "black sites" where detainees were interrogated and abused beyond the monitoring scrutiny of human rights groups and even Congress. But the Post purposely concealed the identity of the countries serving as the locale of those secret prisons in order to enable the plainly illegal program to continue without bothersome disruptions: "the Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior US officials."

2004 when the New York Times discovered that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on the electronic communications of Americans without the warrants required by the criminal law. George Bush summoned the paper's publisher (Arthur Sulzberger) and executive editor (Bill Keller) and directed them to conceal what they had learned, the NYT complied by sitting on the story for a-year-and-a-half: until late December, 2005, long after Bush had been safely re-elected.

Source

Not surprising at all, every single news outlet would put interest above ethics.

Just do yourself a favor and file Bloomberg into the "will sacrifice journalistic integrity for profit", and the next time you read something from them, keep that in mind. Makes it much easier not to take them seriously.

These days, sadly, most media news should be found in fiction.


Khar

I'm not surprised at all.

I'd like to know why people haven't got together, raised funds, and create their own TV stations? Report on the issues, unbiased, of course, then make TV shows that reflect us and our values. A take-over, if you will.

Fylgje
I'm not surprised at all.

I'd like to know why people haven't got together, raised funds, and create their own TV stations? Report on the issues, unbiased, of course, then make TV shows that reflect us and our values. A take-over, if you will.

We had a network once, it was called PBS.
Then bigbid and his muppet SS took over.
News is such blatant propaganda these days,
I just throw darts to get my news.

reply to post by Asktheanimals

News is such blatant propaganda these days, I just throw darts to get my news.

True to a point but we can still find a lot of valid information. Even when it comes from things like this where one org throws the other under the bus.

Of course we're obviously missing out on a lot of memory holed stuff. We may never find out some of it.