The decision came in a call to four journalists huddled in a Hong Kong conference room. On the line 12 time zones away in New York was their boss, Matthew Winkler, the longtime editor in chief of Bloomberg News. And, they were frustrated by what he was telling them.
The investigative report they had been working on for the better part of a year, which detailed the hidden financial ties between one of the wealthiest men in China and the families of top Chinese leaders, would not be published.
In the call late last month, Winkler defended his decision, comparing it to the self-censorship by foreign news bureaus trying to preserve their ability to report inside Nazi-era Germany, according to Bloomberg employees familiar with the discussion.
"He said, 'If we run the story, we'll be kicked out of China,'" one of the employees said. Less than a week later, a second article, about the children of senior Chinese officials employed by foreign banks, was also declared dead, employees said.
Winkler said in an email on Friday that the articles in question were not killed. "What you have is untrue," he said. "The stories are active and not spiked." His statement was echoed by the senior editor on the articles, Laurie Hays.
Winkler and several other senior executives at Bloomberg declined to discuss his conference calls with reporters and editors in Hong Kong.
Several Bloomberg employees in Hong Kong said Winkler made clear in his call that his concerns were primarily about continuing to have reporters work in China, not protecting company revenues. Even so, they said, he gave the listeners a clear impression that the company was in retreat on aspects of its coverage of the world's second-largest economy, a little more than a year after it locked horns with a confident Chinese leadership that has shown itself willing to punish foreign news organisations that cross it.
Bloomberg News infuriated the government in 2012 by publishing a series of articles on the personal wealth of the families of Chinese leaders, including the new Communist Party chief, Xi Jinping. Bloomberg's operations in China have suffered since, as new journalists have been denied residency and sales of its financial terminals to state enterprises have slowed. Chinese officials have said repeatedly that news coverage on the wealth and personal lives of Chinese leaders crosses a red line.
The perception among some Bloomberg employees that the company is now unwilling to cross such lines has left them unsettled. More broadly, it has cast new light on the dilemma that numerous foreign news organisations confront as they navigate the pressures of doing both journalism and business in China.
As the article on Xi's family was published, in June 2012, Chinese officials ordered the Bloomberg News website blocked. Today, it remains inaccessible on Chinese servers. No Bloomberg journalist trying to enter China on a new long-term assignment has received a residency visa.
Most important for the larger Bloomberg company's bottom line, financial news terminal subscriptions, which cost more than $20,000 per year and are the main revenue generator for Bloomberg, slowed for a spell in China, after officials issued orders to some Chinese companies to avoid buying subscriptions. Despite all that, Bloomberg got a license renewal this July from the State Council, China's cabinet, that allows it to continue providing financial news for two more years.
Other news organisations have come under similar pressure. The websites of The New York Times, including a new Chinese-language edition, were blocked when it published an article in October 2012 on the family wealth of Wen Jiabao, then the prime minister. Like Bloomberg, The Times has also not received residency visas for new journalists.
In recent years, some editors at Bloomberg have encouraged reporters to tackle ambitious investigative reports, in order to broaden the company beyond its foundation as a speed-driven financial news service. At times, that aggressiveness has resulted in ethical breaches, as when Bloomberg was forced to disclose in May that its journalists had gained access to the log-in data of terminal customers.
Bloomberg News has already come under criticism as word of the uncertain fate of the investigative China articles has slowly leaked out in recent days. An animation arm of Next Media, a powerful Hong Kong media company critical of the Chinese Communist Party, released an online video cartoon on Friday evening mocking Bloomberg for self-censorship.
©2013 The New York Times News Service
