As former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman Mike Bloomberg plunged in to the Democratic race for Presidential nomination, Bloomberg News, the media outlet owned by him, announced a moratorium on conducting investigations of Democratic presidential candidates.
Bloomberg, who at an estimated wealth of $52 billion is one of the wealthiest people in the world, owns Bloomberg News, which is one of the world’s largest employers of journalists, with an editorial team strength of 2700. He has already purchased around $34 million worth of ad space, in what is likely to be the most expensive publicity blitz for a presidential nominee.
In a letter written by Bloomberg’s editor in chief, John Micklethwait to the outlet’s staffers wrote, "There is no point in trying to claim that covering this presidential campaign will be easy for a newsroom that has built up its reputation for independence in part by not writing about ourselves..."
“We will write about virtually all aspects of this presidential contest,” he added but also said that news outlet will refrain from investigating Bloomberg’s Democratic rivals in the primaries, “we will continue our tradition of not investigating Mike (and his family and foundation) and we will extend the same policy to his rivals in the Democratic primaries.”
The outlet however said that it would still carry on investigations into the Trump presidency.
“For the moment, our . . . team will continue to investigate the Trump administration, as the government of the day,” said Micklethwait. “If Mike is chosen as the Democratic presidential candidate (and Donald Trump emerges as the Republican one), we will reassess how we do that.”
Justifying his decision, Micklethwait pointed out that “no previous presidential candidate has owned a journalistic organisation of this size”.