[jonplackett]

As John Gruber writes after every single link to Bloomberg:

* Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October 2018 — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true.

[yumraj]

Gruber can write what he wants, but is there any evidence that Bloomberg's institutional credibility was impacted in anyway.

I see tons of articles from Bloomberg being posted on HN, where people care about that issue. Outside of this, no one cared and there are people on both camps as far as that story is concerned.

[jonplackett]

Having 'people in both camps' doesn't mean much. There are people in both camps for literally anything because opinion is cheap.

What matters is not people's opinions but evidence (or lack of it).

[CamperBob2]

No one cared because not enough people looked past the initial headline. Gruber is doing a service to everyone, including honest journalists and their publications, by reminding us.

That particular story wasn't quite as fraudulent as Newsweek's exposé of a random retired Japanese-American guy as "Satoshi Nakamoto" a few years back, but it's close.

[idrios]

Additional friendly reminder that Bloomberg sees Facebook as the biggest threat to its existence and is extremely motivated to report negatively about them

[qnt]

How do you reason this?

The overlap of the two businesses is likely counted in single digit percentages of revenue.

[idrios]

Because Facebook's news feed cuts out news outlets as middlemen. Though now Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn and a number of other sites do too so it was pretty inevitable, but Facebook started the trend and before that the only way to get news was pretty much just through major media outlets that you paid for like newspapers or tv news.

Sorry that I don't have numbers

[qnt]

Right, but Bloomberg doesn't make (meaningful) money from showing news to a wide audience. Bloomberg is somewhat unique among news providers in that _news is the advert_ for the company.

They sell a software terminal at about $20k/yr subscription, and there are > 325,000 paying subscribers. It's nearly an essential tool in finance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal.

It's pretty neat, there's some really interesting tech and history involved but it's all hidden away in a very insulated industry.

[knolax]

Don't forget their "market moving bonuses" https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/12/the-bloomberg-m...

[btown]

If a story is found to be false and moves Bloomberg stock down, does that still qualify for a bonus?

[chewie123]

Bloomberg is a private company.

[lidHanteyk]

Go Bayesian. With every passing month/year, multiply your expectation that the story is true by a fixed decay factor between 0 and 1; this simulates the exponential distribution. But also be sure to update how surprised you will be, if the story does ever corroborate!

[coolandsmartrr]

I'm not sure if the integrity of this article - an excerpt from an upcoming book by another editorial team - was affected by Bloomberg's previous editorial actions.

[CamperBob2]

A news source has literally nothing to sell except credibility.

Although as qnt points out, this particular one sells terminal access. So I guess they can go ahead and throw the credibility thing overboard, and still do OK.

[droithomme]

Yes. Bloomberg uses their publication to manipulate the stock market to the advantage of insiders. This is completely obvious based on the huge number of absolute bullshit fabricated stories where they and their anonymous sources are the only starting point.

[CamperBob2]

And they cheerfully admit as much [1]. Who downvoted you, I wonder...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...

[burtonator]

I forget what country it was... somewhere in northern Europe.

(looks like it might be Bangladesh (see below for link))

They passed legislation that allows a RIVER to have rights and lawyers can sue on its behalf.

We need similar legislation for reality. We have about 50% of the country that literally doesn't give a shit about lying.

The truth should have rights to sue.

Now I KNOW there is a fuzzy ground but there are also things that are clearly, provably false.

If a politician says he was in the United States, yet there are records, showing he was in Germany, and you can prove damages, you should be able to sue.

We already have limits to the 1st amendment. You can't libel or slander someone for example. The truth needs to be protected. Otherwise we're doomed.

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/03/740604142/should-rivers-have-...

[3fe9a03ccd14ca5]

Honest question, what problem would this litigation solve? Can you provide an example where the Truth would litigate?