While ABC and CBS were largely putting aside the many controversies of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to tout his rapid rise in the polls Tuesday, Leta Hong Fincher, the wife of a former award-winning Bloomberg News reporter was busy reminding the public of how Bloomberg censors his reporters who cover China and threatens those that don’t submit.
“I am one of the many women Mike Bloomberg’s company tried to silence through nondisclosure agreements. The funny thing is, I never even worked for Bloomberg. But my story shows the lengths that the Bloomberg machine will go to in order to avoid offending Beijing,” she began her piece in The Intercept.
According to Hong Fincher, her husband, Michael Forsythe, published an article with Bloomberg News documenting the wealth Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s family had amassed. Shortly thereafter, Hong Fincher’s family was threatened with death by a mysterious woman with ties to a Xi relative. While Bloomberg News was dragging their feet to get them out of the country, she broke her silence and tweeted about the death threats. The company fruitlessly pressured Forsythe to get her to delete them.
Her husband would later work on a similar story for Bloomberg News about the wealth accumulated by communist officials and their relatives, even receiving praise from an editor eager to publish it. “Then Bloomberg killed the story at the last minute, and the company fired my husband in November after comments by Bloomberg News editor-in-chief Matt Winkler were leaked. ‘If we run the story, we’ll be kicked out of China,’ Winkler reportedly said on a company call,” she explained.
Hong Fincher’s family was then subjected to a months-long legal battle where Bloomberg sent teams of lawyers to threaten financial ruin against them if she didn’t sign an NDA. Bloomberg finally relented after she hired the lawyer who represented Edward Snowden. The company also claimed the article wasn’t ready for publication, but The New York Times put it on the front page.
While the networks (including NBC) were still refusing to report on how Bloomberg had ordered his news company to refrain from investigating him and other Democratic candidates (but still hammer President Trump), Fox News Channel covered Hong Fincher’s cautionary tale. Host Tucker Carlson did a segment on how Bloomberg kowtows to the communists:
Ben Richardson, Bloomberg's Asia editor, later said he had been told directly by leaders at his company that covering the Chinese Politburo is off-limits. That's like telling a Washington bureau chief you can't cover Congress because you might insult them. That's Michael Bloomberg's position.
Just today, former Bloomberg reporter Leta Hong Fincher wrote in The Intercept about how Bloomberg's lawyers threatened to destroy her life if she wouldn't sign a nondisclosure agreement about the company's censorship practices.
Carlson also played a soundbite of CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin from 2014, pressing Bloomberg on muzzling his China reporters. “In China, they have rules about what you can publish. We follow those rules. If you don't follow the rules, you are not in the country,” Bloomberg argued. “We write the stories that we think are interesting and we distribute them where they are allowed to be distributed.”
Carlson played another soundbite of Bloomberg seriously arguing that Xi was not a dictator. “XI Jinping is not a dictator (…) No, he has a constituency to answer to.” Imagine the liberal media’s reaction if Trump said something like that.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight
February 18, 2020
8:07:58 p.m. Eastern(…)
TUCKER CARLSON: We could go on. There are endless examples of this kind of thing. It's happening all around us.
So, how about Michael Bloomberg? He’s running for president. Maybe more than any one in America, Bloomberg represents the beliefs and values of our current aristocracy, which is by far the worst in American history. The stupidest, the most greedy. Not surprisingly, Bloomberg has both kowtowed to the Chinese and gotten rich from the Chinese. He’s not embarrassed by it.
In 2014, Bloomberg explained that actually China's unelected leader isn't really a dictator.
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (PBS): The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China. And they listen to the public. When the public says, “I can't breathe the air” – XI Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he is not going to survive.
MARGARET HOOVER: He is not a dictator?
BLOOMBERG: No, he has a constituency to answer to.
CARLSON: So the Chinese dictator is not a dictator. Makes you wonder how Michael Bloomberg would govern as president or maybe it explains how he would govern as president.
But Bloomberg's personal admiration for the blood-thirsty fossil in charge of the world's largest communist country, isn't the only reason he likes China. There’s big money at stake. Of course, that’s always what it’s about.
Bloomberg's company has enormous investments in the country and that has influenced how Bloomberg News reports on China. In 2013, for example, Bloomberg News was accused of killing stories that would have revealed corruption by family members of the Chinese dictator. And, yes, he is a dictator.
Ben Richardson, Bloomberg's Asia editor, later said he had been told directly by leaders at his company that covering the Chinese Politburo is off-limits. That's like telling a Washington bureau chief you can't cover Congress because you might insult them. That's Michael Bloomberg's position.
Just today, former Bloomberg reporter Leta Hong Fincher wrote in The Intercept about how Bloomberg's lawyers threatened to destroy her life if she wouldn't sign a nondisclosure agreement about the company's censorship practices.
But don't take their word for it. A few years ago, Bloomberg openly admitted that he let China sensor his company's news. He actually said that on television. Here it is.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN (CNBC): Over the past year there has been questions about the journalism going on in China and whether the company in its effort to grow has muzzled. [Transition]
BLOOMBERG: In China, they have rules about what you can publish. We follow those rules. If you don't follow the rules, you are not in the country. [Transition] We write the stories that we think are interesting and we distribute them where they are allowed to be distributed.
CARLSON: Where they are allowed to be distributed. The scariest part is that as China has grown more powerful, America has grown more dependent on it.
(…)
