Topics: Michael Bloomberg, War Room, Education, Media Criticism, Politics News
The conflict of interest inherent in having a media company owned by a powerful politician would probably be easier to explain away if that media company’s new opinion arm refrained from directly attacking prominent critics of the boss. But Bloomberg View, like Bloomberg himself, doesn’t care what nitpicking critics say. That’s why no editor there thought it unseemly of Bloomberg View to run a Jonathan Alter piece attacking education policy expert Diane Ravitch, a vociferous critic of Mayor Bloomberg’s handing of the New York City schools system.
Bloomberg View is the unasked-for opinion arm of Bloomberg L.P., the financial information company founded and owned by the billionaire mayor of New York City. Before it launched, one of its editors promised that it would run only “ideology-free, empirically-based editorial positions about the pressing issues of our time,” because the ideology of the wealthy elite does not count as ideology.
There was already a minor controversy when it was reported that the opinion arm of Bloomberg’s media company — a company he is not supposed to be directly running while he’s mayor — would be located not at corporate HQ, but at the offices of the Bloomberg Family Foundation, where the mayor is allowed to participate in day-to-day operations.
Alter, formerly of Newsweek, is no lazy hack. He is smart and hard-working. Mayor Bloomberg didn’t directly assign some shameless attack dog to go after one of his critics. Alter obviously sincerely agrees with the Bloomberg philosophy. But it still looks seriously inappropriate, like Mayor Mike’s P.R. department firing off a response to this recent Ravitch op-ed.
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