Bloomberg apologizes for premature story on prisoner swap and disciplines the journalists involved
Bloomberg apologizes for premature story on prisoner swap and disciplines the journalists involved
Bloomberg News is apologizing for a premature story written last week about the prisoner exchange involving the United States and Russia and says it has disciplined the journalists involved.
Bloomberg News apologized Monday for prematurely publishing a story last week that revealed a prisoner exchange involving the United States and Russia and said it had disciplined the employees involved.
The story moved nearly four hours before an embargo on the exchange was lifted by the White House.
John Micklethwait, Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, said in a memo to staff Monday that the story represented a clear violation of ethical standards. Bloomberg would not say how many employees were disciplined and did not identify them.
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So what was the error? That they published a story 4 hours before the US Fed Govt had authorized disseminating the info?
Russia could've turned the aircraft around and scuttled the deal. The government wanted the news of the exchange to only take place after the prisoners touched US soil and couldn't be kidnapped back to Russia.
It's not uncommon on sensitive stories like this for the government to loop-in journalists ahead of time so they can pull together background and research with an agreed-upon embargo until some point in the future.
This wasn't the US government telling the newspaper they couldn't report on a story they had uncovered from their own investigation.