One could write this article about Bloomberg ... or one could write this article about China. I think the China part of the story is more relevant and newsworthy at this point, considering how things have unfolded in the years since. The news company probably didn't decide all on its own to pursue this remarkable effort to kill a story that had not much to do with itself.
On the contrary, that is a separate issue, although an important one.
This story is about the integrity of reporting from Bloomberg. An important tradition in journalism is the firewall between the money making and the news reporting parts of an organization. Yes, that firewall is breached entirely too often, but many new media organizations simply don't have the tradition at the management level.
That is important to know, no matter who is applying pressure on the money side.
Exactly. Bloomberg employs many fine reporters and writers, and often does good work. I like Mark Gurman, who often has accurate scoops of unannounced Apple products.
However, Bloomberg should be read knowing they are owned by a company and owner that does not respect their journalistic independence. Readers should know if it comes down to journalism or their billion-dollar terminal business [1], the terminals win.
When Bloomberg News refused to cover any Democratic nominees because they didn't want to have to potentially cover anything negative on Michael Bloomberg, they lost most credibility with me:
You're absolutely right. But bending the integrity of journalism to appease authoritarian governments is nothing new. We've been doing it with Saudi Arabia for decades.
Do we think this is THAT much different from the Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos), Time Magazine and related (owned by Marc Benioff), etc? I mean, is there any major news outlet (short of possibly PBS) where we shouldn't assume some level of benign (or not so benign) influence from the money making side?
Qualitatively different? Probably not. Quantitatively? Yes, I think so. Bezos fooling with the Post's news-covering editorial activities would be a major scandal that would likely end with him having a very bad reputation and possibly start with a large number of the Post's journalists publicly taking a walk. But Bloomberg doesn't have that kind of integrity or reputation to maintain; this story is just another day at the office.
That doesn't mean Bezos does not have influence, nor that he won't, hasn't, or isn't exercising it inappropriately. But what Bloomberg did is discussed to great lengths in Journalism 101. That's hard to keep quiet.
Indeed. Making the headline here about Bloomberg smells of the exact kind of tiptoeing around the CCP that the article discusses. The real story here, and probably of this decade, is the corruption and subversion of Western institutions by the Chinese government.
Probably because elites in china enjoy a huge advantage, and elites in the west would want that kind of advantage. If you got the power and money in China, with the right kind of connections you can literally get away with murder.
Or CCP is a shell for communist westerners to try out their social experiments on other nations. Communism is itself a western import to China, not an indigenous worldview.
I've got to congratulate you. I've been a conspiracy nut for decades but I've never heard anyone suggest that the Chinese Communists are a front for Western control.
* slow clap*
But no. Study the history of the Middle Kingdom. They invented totalitarian bureaucratic central government centuries ago.
Well, communism is not indigenous to China. It is a western idea imported by western educated Chinese intellectuals, who then indoctrinated Mao.
Whether the western control is direct or indirect, it is indisputable that the CCP is not an indigenous movement. It is a product of western ideological imperialism.
As a very visual example, go travel around China, visiting areas with greater and lesser CCP control. The less the control, the more elements of traditional China are around. The greater the control, the more it looks like a replica of yet another Western metropolis.
I saw this very clearly when visiting Xinjing province near Tibet and hiking through the villages. The normal part of the village has traditional, hand made housing, beautiful craftsmenship, great food. Then, on the outskirts of the villages, were towering, empty apartment blocks. The CCP planned to move the villagers out of their traditional homes into these huge apartment blocks they could more easily control.
So, yes, most clearly the CCP is a product of the west, not ethnic Chinese culture.
Your earlier comment sounded to me like you were saying that current Western communist elites are somehow controlling the CCP, and that's why they are going along with "the corruption and subversion of Western institutions by the Chinese government." But that doesn't make sense to me because there aren't any Western communist elites anymore, are there?
But if you're just pointing out the Western origin of the foundations of Chinese Communism them, yes, I agree the whole thing could be seen, from the POV of the West, as being confronted with a kind of social/political prodigal son. I'm so used to thinking of communism as an Eastern thing, but you're right (again).
There aren't any obvious communist elites, but there is a weird whitewashing of communism going on. And, a communist china fits the purposes of capitalist west quite well. So, I would say if there are western elite controlling China, they are doing it for personal gain, not ideological.
> There aren't any obvious communist elites, but there is a weird whitewashing of communism going on.
Well the CCP is stumping hard on the propaganda front. They've shoved the Dalai Lama out of the spot light, etc., and they're working hard to influence Western media, and IMO too many are happy to go along with that to make money. Don't get me started on tech companies. I just don't think that there's a lot of secretly pro-communists in the West.
> And, a communist china fits the purposes of capitalist west quite well.
How?
> So, I would say if there are western elite controlling China, they are doing it for personal gain, not ideological.
Ah but isn't that true of all elites globally? I'm not trying to "whataboutism" here, I just assume that most if not all elites are ideologically agnostic.
It's intellectually dishonest to wax philosophical and paint the consumers as the problem. Powerful people have made conscious decisions to short sell their countrymen in the interest personal gain. My witting or not engagement with their company is not the problem. It is ridiculous, to the point where I must question the motives behind your comment, to offload the moral responsibility of every company onto their customers. It is impossible for every person to vet every company and their adjuncts. I did not tell Amazon to work their employees so hard that the only way they can keep their job is by wearing diapers. No. The responsibility for decisions like this rests solely on the few people at Amazon who have the power to change such conditions. Whether I shop at Amazon or not is immaterial. It is the responsibility of government to step in and try the greedy tyrants at every abusive company for their wholesale abuse of Americans. The fact that government has not arrested these abusive people is a reflection on the quality of people in position to effect real changes.
I not sure what you are getting it. My position is I should consider the way businesses I use treat their workers. If a business treats them like shit then I may likely choose to stop doing business with them, even if it inconveniences me.
America. That's quite a grand claim, I wonder what your voting record looks like. And if you've seen any Hollywood movies lately, shopped on Amazon, etc...
I made this comment on a sibling and it is as relevant in response to you as it was to the sibling. Perhaps more.
It's intellectually dishonest to wax philosophical and paint the consumers as the problem. Powerful people have made conscious decisions to short sell their countrymen in the interest personal gain. My witting or not engagement with their company is not the problem. It is ridiculous, to the point where I must question the motives behind your comment, to offload the moral responsibility of every company onto their customers. It is impossible for every person to vet every company and their adjuncts. I did not tell Amazon to work their employees so hard that the only way they can keep their job is by wearing diapers. No. The responsibility for decisions like this rests solely on the few people at Amazon who have the power to change such conditions. Whether I shop at Amazon or not is immaterial. It is the responsibility of government to step in and try the greedy tyrants at every abusive company for their wholesale abuse of Americans. The fact that government has not arrested these abusive people is a reflection on the quality of people in position to effect real changes.
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See my sibling comment. These cheap punches are hollow and detract from the matter at hand. I imagine low effort comments like this are prohibited here.
You mean said corruption which is only possible by the willing cooperation of western corporations and institutions?
Corruption isn't a one way street here. The real story isn't 'the CCP is trying to infiltrate western governments!' because everyone remotely aware of the geopolitical game already knows this. You and I aren't going to be able to do anything about this and it's just avoiding things we CAN do.
Which is pressuring our local governments and companies to not engage in this obvious corruption. Which means going back to the original point of the article which is Bloomberg purposely burying stories for the sake of appeasing foreign powers.
You know, that's a very fair point. I suppose the actual surprising part is just how successful the CCP has been at this, which, as you say, requires participation. I do think it is worth highlighting that it is happening, because so many people still regard such statements as "conspiracy theory". I think I agree with you that the actual lever for combating it is pressuring our own institutions, though.
As an aside, your comment is nearly dead only 3 minute after posting.
It happens, some people might think I'm not hardline enough on the CCP, others might think it's not worth discussing. That's just the nature of HN posts around topics like this.
As for the surprise factor, if you look at the history of the CCP and the way they use capitalism against itself it makes a lot of sense. China is a huge country worth its weight in gold to corporations, many of whom are now deeply embedded because of how much profit it generates. If they rebuke China, that means losing (a lot) of money which goes against how our system works.
In this sense, it's the free market working as intended. Which is easily gamed by political powers by tossing more money and incentives into the system.
> The real story here, and probably of this decade, is the corruption and subversion of Western institutions by the Chinese government.
And that “real” story has been covered by the quoted NY Times article, and is not the major subject of this story. This also shows that only some western institutions are corrupted by China, including Bloomberg, but not all.
Please do not take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. This sort of grandiose, low-information flamebait is the opposite of what we want here.
Yes the west is not perfect either, but let's not pretend as if Chinese citizens enjoy even a fraction of the freedom and liberty as Americans in the U.S. In one of these countries they kidnap you if you criticize the government, guess which.
Again, the atrocities committed by the CCP are in a whole different league. For example I post on Twitter all the time criticizing President Trump and the U.S. government. If I were a Chinese citizen in China criticizing Xi Jinping, first of all Twitter is blocked (as is Google, Facebook, and basically half the internet), and I'd be kidnapped and never seen again.
Again the U.S. has a ton of problems. But equating them to the CCP is like equating Trump or Hillary Clinton to Hitler. I don't like Trump, but he is an angel compared to Hitler.
Then why is any corporation or person allowed any involvement with China? Where are the heavy-duty sanctions to punish China and those businesses who interact with it?
You'll hear this big anti-China talk, but no one actually wants to shutdown trade with China. It is too lucrative. It just sounds like a bunch of people complaining about China to distract from domestic problems.
We do - that's the natural consequence of our economic interdependence with China, and one of the strongest arguments for it. Despite CCP oppression, the average Chinese citizen has had a rapidly increasing quality of life over the past few decades.
I would be leery of saying we're doing anything other than feeding the beast at the moment. Yes common citizens may have seen some improvement in QoL, but the regime is more powerful than ever.
Corporations need the cheap repressed labor as much as China needs US Dollars. It's the perverse incentives of capitalism. Quality of life and human rights crusades are a potential byproduct of capitalism, not the goal, nor in anyway guaranteed. Maybe you'll hear some corp heads beat the anti-China drum, but they'll silently be reviewing their quarterly earnings report to make sure overseas labor expenses aren't eroding profit margins.
It's time for you to stop breaking the site guidelines. I've posted four long explanations in this thread, and hundreds if not thousands of previous explanations over many years. You can easily find them by following the copious links to past moderation comments that I always include.
It's fine if you don't want to read them, it's fine if you read them and disagree, it's not fine for you to continue flouting the rules here, and this has zero to do with liking or disliking China or communist parties. It's about having a site that doesn't devolve into flamewar tirefires. Please stop now.
As a counter to the other poster, though I do not always agree, I appreciate your efforts, dang. It is not an easy job, and probably quite thankless, but necessary.
Agree that the China angles are important and newsworthy (though it's important to note that Forsythe's reporting was eventually published by the NYT).
This article isn't about that, though: it's about companies with deep pockets trying to silence not just their (former) employees, but their employees' family members as well. Considering that companies like Bloomberg have the resources to financially ruin people if they don't comply, and seemed like they were fully ready to exercise that option, this is incredibly troubling.
