Michael Bloomberg's media company is getting into the opinion business--but what will distinguish these op-eds from its thousands of competitors so diligently documented by your humble aggregators at the Wire? Apparently, Bloomberg's opinions will be fact-based and ideology-free. Or so says Bloomberg View's staff, an assertion which has Salon's Alex Pareene rather miffed.
New Bloomberg View executive editor Jamie Rubin says the site will provide only "ideology-free, empirically-based editorial positions about the pressing issues of our time." Not likely, Pareene writes.
Yes, Michael Bloomberg is going to pay writers to explain to everyone that Michael Bloomberg's beliefs are objective truths. ... You have to be terribly self-satisfied and fairly stupid to think that whatever you think about things is the 'ideology-free' position (which is different from thinking you're just plain right about everything, a common enough trait among basically everyone). ... Bloomberg is a pro-corporate, pro-nanny state 'liberal' Republican, and I imagine that his opinion section will espouse roughly the same opinions--which means it will match up nicely with almost every other mainstream non-far-right editorial board in the nation.
Not that Bloomberg wants to hear that! Because at the center of his political identity is the notion that everyone else is a partisan hack, and he is America's one true clear-eyed independent ...
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Elspeth Reeve
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