Bloomgberg - Goldman Sachs Complaint Indicates Questionable Methods

Bloomberg has only just recently realized its crucial mistake of allowing its journalists' special access to the log-in information of clients from the company's information trading terminals.

Or had the company known all along that it was a wrongful tactic?

In the recent Washington Post article, Goldman Sachs filed a complaint against the financial data and news company after a Bloomberg reporter had pointed out to the firm that a Goldman employee had not logged into the Bloomberg terminal for a couple of weeks.  Bloomberg stated that it had corrected its mistake.

A glance at the Bloomberg Terminal

The information that Bloomberg reporters had special access to included the time of log-in of any of the company's subscribers, and the type of functions they were accessing.  Although such data may seem trivial compared to all of the other personal information the company holds (trading, portfolio, monitor), Bloomberg reporters have been notorious for their aggressive tactics to beat competition in breaking news, and those two pieces of information provided them a grounds for some serious inquiries.

One Bloomberg reporter had knowledge about the log-in times of multiple traders on a single desk and would call daily about potential layoffs.  Other Bloomberg journalists were said to have used their special access to attempt to discover whether Bruno Iksil, the JP Morgan trader blamed for the $6 billion  trading loss in 2012, had faced disciplinary action.

Bloomberg was even able to report the earnings of Walt Disney Co. and NetApp Inc. before the company's scheduled releases, which was all made possible by guessing the unprotected web addresses of the press release before being made public.

How could Bloomberg, the multinational mass media partnership that makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market, not have known that this was a wrongful tactic?  When the company stated that it had corrected its mistake, was it referring to the mistake of allowing reporters to access the data terminals, or the mistake of getting caught doing so?  Should there be greater consequences for Bloomberg allowing its reporters to exploit personal data for news and to rise above competition?  Leave thoughts in the comments below.