Surely Mike Bloomberg wouldn’t want to damage the credibility of a news organization in which he had invested so heavily, I thought. How wrong I was.

Michael Bloomberg took such a brutal pummeling during his first appearance on the presidential debate stage this week, it seems almost a shame to pile on.

But…

Since he’s running for the nation’s highest office, it’s important to point out that, amidst all the pointed questions he fielded about the non-disclosure agreements he’s continuing to enforce against women who used to work for his company and the stop-and-frisk policies he imposed on New York City’s citizens of color when he was mayor, there was one Bloomberg didn’t get asked:

What’s his attitude toward the First Amendment of the Constitution that, were he to win the presidency, he’d be sworn to protect and defend?

So far, the record isn’t encouraging.

The women who protested the hostile work environment they found at Bloomberg L.P. aren’t the only ones Bloomberg is muzzling. Reporters and editors who work for Bloomberg News are under orders to go no further than the most perfunctory he-said, she-said coverage of the fight for the Democratic nomination. “How can you investigate yourself?” Bloomberg said in an interview, explaining the bizarre policy.

Huh?

We speak truth to power in America

Unless Bloomberg regards reporters who work for his news organization as an extension of himself — a classic sign of narcissism — they wouldn’t be investigating themselves. They’d be investigating a candidate for president, which is what reporters should do in a presidential election year. The fact that he happens to be boss should be irrelevant.

Speaking truth to power is what we do here in America. It’s fundamental to our democracy. That’s why free speech is the very first item protected in our Bill of Rights.

At a time when President Donald Trump is doing his level best to undermine the new media’s watchdog role in our society, it’s depressing in the extreme to see one of his would-be replacements — and the owner of a media company, no less — suggesting that reporters can’t be fair.

Can Bloomberg reporters cover the 2020 campaign even-handedly? Their Las Vegas debate story rightly highlighted his rivals’ “series of jabs about Bloomberg’s crude statements regarding women and a stop-and-frisk policing policy that targeted minority men,” under a headline that started, “Bloomberg Hammered.” They also wrote one of the first stories about the leak of a 2015 Bloomberg speech defending stop and frisk.

But these are breaking news stories, not investigations. 

“Quite honestly, I don’t want all the reporters I’m paying to write a bad story about me,” Bloomberg said in 2018. He was laughing, but was he kidding?

On the debate stage, Bloomberg reminded his audience and his rivals of how much good he has done with all his money.  Democrats need to ask themselves: At what price?

This is a question I have personal experience grappling with.

It was 2015 when I visited New York City for my orientation as a politics editor at Bloomberg News. It occupied several floors in one of two glittering Bloomberg towers on a prime piece of Manhattan real estate. I marveled at how a tiny news service devoted to financial news had exploded into a global, multi-media network that demanded — and won — a seat at the adults table.

In Washington, where I spent most of my career, Bloomberg reporters secured coveted spots on the congressional and White House press pools and served as officers of major professional journalism organizations. And yes, I was grateful that, at a time when so many newspapers were folding, a seemingly benevolent billionaire was putting so much of his money into my craft.

Fight club: Grading Bloomberg, Sanders and other Democrats at the Las Vegas debate: Mastio & Lawrence

There were warning signs that, in retrospect, I neglected to take seriously enough. A Bloomberg News billionaire’s list included the names of every billionaire in the world — except the one whose name was on the building. In one story we were doing about political donors, I had to fight to make sure Bloomberg’s name was included. But I put this down to the growing pains of an organization still in its relative adolescence. Some of this, I figured, was long-time employees being over-protective of the boss and over-interpreting his wishes. Surely Mike Bloomberg wouldn’t want to damage the credibility of a news organization in which he had invested so heavily, I thought.

Subsequent events would prove how wrong I was.

Buying his own set of privileges

I left Bloomberg in 2016 when the former mayor began exploring a potential run for the presidency and we were given a set of orders for how (not) to cover him. That experience came back to me this month when the Washington Post, in an investigation of Bloomberg’s attitudes and behavior toward women, unearthed “The Wit and Wisdom of Mike Bloomberg.” The most disturbing snippet to me was not one of the crude, profane quotes about his female colleagues but the epitaph that opens the pamphlet: 

“When I joined Bloomberg Financial Markets, I wondered if I had inadvertently joined a religious sect, such was the dedication of the employees to its founder and their enthusiasm for the company,” the woman who created the pamphlet wrote. “Today, I’m a convert. And when we rent Madison Square Garden for the mass nuptials, I’ll be there.”

A Republican record: Michael Bloomberg is not the candidate who can beat Donald Trump

Darkly satirical as it is, this does reflect a disturbing truth about The Bloomberg Way. It suggests that money can buy your own set of privileges and your own version of truth; that if you are rich enough, and successful enough, if you create enough jobs, there’s a special set of rules for you. You can say things and do things that people with less well-upholstered wallets and resumes can’t. Things like asking your hosts at a speaking event to bury a video that includes some inconvenient truths about your views on race relations.

That goes against the ideals of the America I grew up in. Admittedly, we haven’t always lived up to those ideals, but those were the ideals we had.

In honor of the venue of the Democratic debate — Las Vegas — I’m going to take a gamble here and say we always will.

I hope I’m not wrong about that, too.

Kathy Kiely, a former USA TODAY political reporter, is the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. Follow her on Twitter: @KathyKiely

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