Bloomberg News, which includes financial news channel Bloomberg TV, is at the center of a shocking snooping scandal.
Reporters for Bloomberg used the Bloomberg Terminals–which are ubiquitous on Wall Street–to see what high-profile traders were searching for and investigating, potentially revealing scoops about the firms. Goldman Sachs brought thee issue to the attention of Bloomberg brass.
The Bloomberg Terminal is rented to customers for around $20,000 a year, with some large firms renting them by the thousands. While some competing news outlets also have them, they did not have access to the behind-the-scenes data that the reporters inside the company did.
The New York Post has the story:
Bloomberg reporters’ ability to access the special so-called customer relationship management (CRM) information features was a holdover from that ’90s era when reporters also worked with the news organizations sales efforts.
“Limited customer relationship data has long been available to our journalists, and has never included clients’ security-level data, position data, trading data or messages,” said Bloomberg spokesman Ty Trippet.
“In light of [Goldman’s] concern as well as a general heightened sensitivity to data access, we decided to disable journalist access to this customer relationship information for all clients,” he noted.