President Donald Trump ‘s re-election campaign has announced that Bloomberg reporters will not be allowed at campaign events. The announcement follows news that the media company’s news division won’t investigate Democratic presidential hopefuls, one of whom is its owner, Michael Bloomberg, according to The Daily Mail . Bloomberg announced last week that he is running for president in 2020 as a Democrat.
In late November, as CNBC News reported at the time, Bloomberg’s news division said that it would be investigating neither its owner, the former New York City Mayor, nor any of his rivals for the Democratic Party nomination. Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait told his reporters in a memo that the company would be following its “tradition” of not investigating its owner. Furthermore, now that Bloomberg is running for president as a Democrat, the news organization, in order to avoid unfairness, would not investigate any other Democratic candidates, either, at least through the primaries.
“We cannot treat Mike’s democratic competitors differently from him,” Micklethwait said.
The agency will continue to investigate Trump, however.
That didn’t sit well with Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale . In a statement, he said that Bloomberg News’ position is unfair and would not be tolerated.
“As President Trump’s campaign, we are accustomed to unfair reporting practices, but most news organizations don’t announce their biases so publicly. Presented with this new policy from Bloomberg News, our campaign was forced to determine how to proceed,” he said.
Parscale said that his team made the decision to ban Bloomberg reporters from Trump campaign events. However, he left open the possibility that the campaign could engage with individual Bloomberg reporters, although those decisions would have to be made on a case-by-case basis.
Donald J. Trump for President is a separate entity from the Trump White House proper, which means that the ban does not appear to cover Bloomberg reporters covering the day-to-day goings-on involving the Trump administration. As recently as today, Bloomberg still had reporters in the press pool present at the White House and aboard Air Force One.
The White House has not announced any policies related to Bloomberg reporters covering the White House in general.
Micklethwait, for his part, shot back at accusations that his agency’s coverage of Trump was unfair.
“The accusation of bias couldn’t be further from the truth. We have covered Donald Trump fairly and in an unbiased way since he became a candidate… and will continue to do so despite the restrictions imposed by the Trump campaign,” he said.