An investigation into China’s wealthy ruling classes got too close too home and Michael Bloomberg or Bloomberg News killed the follow up in 2012, NPR reports. The company fired the reporter on the investigation and tried to silence his wife. The NPR story focuses on nondisclosures, but this story goes beyond that into Bloomberg’s dealings with China, and how news is manipulated. It exposes the outsized influence of China on the U.S. news.
The Story
The investigation was a follow-up to a report in 2012 about how China’s ruling classes amass wealth. It sharply focused on the country’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, and the family of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The story was trashed.
The Chinese ambassador warned against continuing the investigation. Death threats followed.
Bloomberg News published the first report over objections from the Chinese ambassador. Then-mayor Bloomberg was allegedly divested since he was mayor but he was in frequent contact with the executives.
China was seen as a growing market and Michael Bloomberg wanted to move his lucrative terminals into the nation. The terminals are the source of his wealth. Continuing the story would have meant getting kicked out of China.
Bloomberg at first denied he killed the story.
As reporters moved on to the followup, the key reporter Mike Forsythe, a former Beijing correspondent for Bloomberg News who now works at the New York Times, and his wife, Leta Hong Fincher, began hearing from other journalists about what they considered death threats.
They got out of China and moved to Hong Kong.
Bloomberg news insisted Forsythe and his wife sign a nondisclosure. Forsythe was fired for allegedly leaking the killing of the probe to other media outlets.
Bloomberg tried to get his wife Leta Hong Fincher to sign a nondisclosure. She wouldn’t do it, even after they threatened to make them reimburse Bloomberg for their costs in moving to Hong Kong upon receiving death threats.
At the time, Bloomberg was very interested in China’s market. He wanted to move into China with his signature terminals, in particular.
DETAILS OF THE STORY
In an interview with NPR, Fincher questioned why the story was killed and why Bloomberg News would want to assure her silence about it.
“They assumed that because I was the wife of their employee, I was the wife,” Fincher said. “I was just an appendage of their employee. I was not a human being.”
As Forsythe and the reporting team worked on the second part of the story into 2013, they remained in contact with editors in New York, Fincher said.
Then, the story was killed, seemingly out of fear they would all get kicked out of China. Mike wanted to do business in China.
“Mike and some of the other reporters and editors who had been working on this story just were asking for answers about … why was this story killed?” Fincher said.
Why the Story Was Killed
Audio obtained by NPR of Bloomberg News’ editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler, in a private conference call with executives in New York and the reporting team, shows Winkler expressed uneasiness about publishing another report going after China’s top leaders.
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“It is for sure going to, you know, invite the Communist Party to, you know, completely shut us down and kick us out of the country,” Winkler said. “So, I just don’t see that as a story that is justified.”
“They will probably kick us out of the country,” he said.
Following the publication of the first investigative piece, Beijing searched Bloomberg News’ bureaus, delayed visas for reporters and ordered state-owned businesses to sign new leases for Bloomberg’s main product — its terminals.
The source of Michael Bloomberg’s wealth are terminals — financial software — and he was looking to extend them into China.
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The terminals, which cost $20,000 each for an annual subscription, are the backbone of the company and have made Michael Bloomberg a fortune. He’s worth over $50 billion, mostly because of the terminals.
At the time of the debate over the story, China was seen as a growing market for Bloomberg, three former executives told NPR.
Bloomberg Lies
Then-Mayor Bloomberg denied the story had been killed but later changed his story.
“Nobody thinks we are wusses and not willing to stand up and write stories that are of interest to the public and that are factually correct,” Bloomberg said.
He had officially given up control of the company, but NPR said Bloomberg remained in frequent contact with executives and shared his desires to expand into China.
Two months later — January 2014 — Bloomberg was no longer mayor and offered up a new explanation.
“If a country gives you the license to do something with certain restrictions, you have two choices,” Bloomberg said at a town hall for his global newsroom, according to audio obtained by NPR. “You either accept the license and do it that way, or you don’t do business there.”
Oh, that’s nice, succumb to China’s oppressive policies.
A month after that, Bloomberg LP Board Chairman Peter Grauer told the Asia Society’s Hong Kong chapter that it had 50 reporters in China to write about local business.
“Every once in a while, we wander a little bit away from that and write stories that we probably … should have rethought,” he said, according to NPR.
The Firing and the Nondisclosure
Bloomberg News suspended Forsythe in 2013, claiming he leaked information about the controversy to other news media and later fired him.
Forsythe declined to comment to NPR because of a nondisclosure agreement he signed. Bloomberg loves his nondisclosure agreements when he’s doing something that makes him look bad.
Others on the investigative team also signed the same agreements, the report said, including at least one who signed the deal to prevent the loss of a month’s pay.
Fincher never signed the nondisclosure paperwork despite pressure from Bloomberg LP.
The company threatened to force Forsythe and Fincher to reimburse the tens of thousands of dollars spent to move them to Hong Kong after the death threats and sue them over the company’s legal costs.
That did not come to pass. Mike Bloomberg was ready to torment these people after China sent out death threats.
Bloomberg Bows to China Regularly
.@MikeBloomberg tells @FiringLineShow that China’s leader is addressing pollution to satisfy constituents & secure his political future.
“The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China and they listen to the public,” he says. pic.twitter.com/B9SoAXJwrM— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) September 27, 2019
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