A bombshell new report has revealed that Bloomberg News killed an investigative report into the Chinese government’s wealth — and even tried to silence the wife of one of their own reporters.
And they did so all at the request of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
Simply put, Bloomberg News caved to a dictatorship regime.
“Six years ago, Bloomberg News killed an investigation into the wealth of Communist Party elites in China, fearful of repercussions by the Chinese government,” NPR reported Tuesday. “The company successfully silenced the reporters involved. And it sought to keep the spouse of one of the reporters quiet, too.”
“They assumed that because I was the wife of their employee, I was the wife,” journalist Leta Hong Fincher told NPR. “I was just an appendage of their employee. I was not a human being.”
Fincher is married to New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe, who previously worked for Bloomberg News. According to the report, Forsythe’s investigation into the secrets behind the wealth of Chinese Communist Party elites had caused great concern in Bejing.
So much concern, in fact, China demanded Bloomberg News kill Forsythe’s story — at the order of Bloomberg News’ editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler, the organization complied.
“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 was reportedly heard in leaked audio telling the mainstream news outlet’s executives. “So, I just don’t see that as a story that is justified.”
“The inference is going to be interpreted by the government there as we are judging them,” Winkler continued. “And they will probably kick us out of the country. They’ll probably shut us down, is my guess.”
In other words, the Communist Chinese Party — the same government that covered-up the deadly Wuhan virus that caused thousands of deaths — threatened Winkler’s wallet if Bloomberg News embarrassed them again.
And he bowed to their will, even though he considered the Chinese leadership to be no better than Nazi Germany.
“It has to be done with a strategic framework and a tactical method that is … smart enough to allow us to continue and not run afoul of the Nazis who are in front of us and behind us everywhere,” Winkler told Bloomberg News executives, according to NPR. “And that’s who they are. And we should have no illusions about it.”
Winkler quietly killed the story and used Non-Disclosure Agreements to silence both the investigative reporter and his wife.
Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City at the time, denied that his namesake news organization killed the story in 2013.
“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 at a press conference defending his news organization.
Bloomberg News would later fire Forsythe over suspicions he leaked information on the story to other news outlets.
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