Bloomberg News wrestles with coverage of candidate Bloomberg

Bloomberg News wrestles with coverage of candidate Bloomberg

SeattlePI.com

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NEW YORK (AP) — Three months after Bloomberg News tried to thread the needle with a plan for covering a presidential campaign with company founder Mike Bloomberg as a candidate, its journalists are learning how hard that can be.

Bloomberg's rise in the polls has invited fresh scrutiny of his wealth and his record as a businessman and mayor of New York City. Bloomberg News can only look so close, however, after declaring it would cover his campaign but not investigate it — rules that were extended to his Democratic rivals out of fairness.

For the most part, Bloomberg journalists are doing exactly what the company said it would — for better or worse.

“There are many, many reporters who have to cover their boss, and for most of them, it's a point of pride to beat their competition,” said Kelly McBride, head of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the journalism think tank Poynter Institute. “In this situation, it's like they're deliberately trying to lose to their competition.”

To a certain extent, Bloomberg is relying on its competitors for some of its coverage.

In the same policy pronouncement, the service said it would continue to aggressively cover Republican President Donald Trump's administration. The Trump campaign swiftly responded by refusing to credential Bloomberg reporters at campaign events. Reporter Jennifer Jacobs was escorted out of a Trump rally earlier this month in Iowa.

The news service, started in 1990 to join Bloomberg's thriving business selling financial information, would not make its executives or editors available to speak to The Associated Press. It has filed some 800 news and opinion pieces on the presidential campaign since Bloomberg announced his candidacy in November.

Bloomberg News reported Thursday on how...

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