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Comment by icebraining | Hacker News Reader

Full context:

Henderson then pressed the ex-mayor on how Bloomberg media would cover him during a campaign. The billionaire said he had already engaged in discussions about the issue with Bloomberg’s head of news, John Micklethwait.

“We’ve always had a policy that we don’t cover ourselves. I happen to believe, in my heart of hearts, you can’t be independent and nobody’s going to believe that you’re independent,” he said.

“And quite honestly, I don’t want the reporters I’m paying to write a bad story about me! I don’t want them to be independent. So you’re going to have to do something,” he added with a laugh.

Bloomberg said his companies would either completely divest from political coverage or pepper news with frequent disclaimers about ownership.

(From https://www.thewrap.com/mike-bloomberg-says-hell-sell-his-me...)

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I knew it was probably missing context, but even with more context it’s not that reassuring.

I agree wholeheartedly that it’s a positive move to abstain from political coverage when your majority stakeholder is running for office. However, the messaging doesn’t sit right with me.

Even if you can’t be truly independent, you should still strive for integrity.

Abstaining from topics where you have conflicts of interests IS integrity.

I have the opposite knee jerk reaction and see people openly talking about their biases and dubious incentives to be an indication of honesty and forthrightness. It's when people make a big song and dance about how pro-independance they are and make a whole song and dance about it that I get suspicious. It reflects not just a lack of honesty towards others but even a lack of honesty towards oneself and an inflated view of their own ethics.

Vertically EVERYBODY with a conflict of interest will put their finger on the scale given enough opportunity.

Yes the candid approach is great, similar to the Intercept, but read elsewhere in the article about the how they haven't followed through on not covering these things. That's very bad.

Strive for, yes.

Expect others to believe you are striving for integrity and journalistic independence?

I don’t reckon that’s going going to work.

Better off, in my opinion, to be honest about it.

That context seems very important - completely changes my initial opinion.

It's a difficult choice. I would have liked him to say that Bloomberg Media should be free to write pieces showing his shortcomings - but its not very realistic of me to expect that.

I'm not sure if I would have the same opinion - but his PoV sounds very human. I'm not sure if I would have liked my employees causing issues for me either, if I was in his position.

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