Bloomberg News not headlining 'stop-and-frisk' controversy
The story did not appear at the top of Bloomberg News’ homepage
Michael Bloomberg and President Trump traded barbs on Tuesday morning after leaked audio revealed the three-time New York City mayor defending the controversial policing strategy "stop and frisk," which disproportionately targeted men of color.
Despite the insults from the high-profile figures — Trump slammed Bloomberg as a racist; Bloomberg fired back that Trump has divided the country with “racist appeals and hateful rhetoric” — the story did not appear at the top of Bloomberg News’ homepage.
Bloomberg News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some of Bloomberg’s competitors, including CNBC and The Wall Street Journal, were also not spotlighting pieces on the stop and frisk audio at the time of publication.
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Bloomberg, who cofounded the financial information and media company Bloomberg LP in 1981, is currently among a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls vying to unseat Trump in November. He now owns about 88 percent of the business, according to Forbes, which is worth a reported $10 billion.
Because he's running for president, Bloomberg's roughly 2,700 journalists are allowed to write about day-to-day developments in the campaign but must avoid in-depth investigations of the Democratic field. It resembles how the news outlet covered Bloomberg’s 12-year tenure in City Hall.
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The 77-year-old found himself the target of new ire on Tuesday, after progressive podcast host Benjamin Dixon uncovered audio of a speech that Bloomberg delivered to the Aspen Institute in 2015, which he blocked from public release at the time.
In an audio clip of the speech, the billionaire acknowledged that "stop and frisk,” the policing strategy that he supported as mayor for a decade, targeted minority "kids" whom cops must throw "up against the wall" to disarm.
“Ninety-five percent of murders -- murderers and murder victims -- fit one M.O.,” he said. “You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city … And that’s where the real crime is.”
Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale shared the audio on Twitter, writing “#BloombergIsARacist,” shortly after Trump deleted a tweet with a similar message. Trump has also praised stop and frisk during his presidency; in 2018, while delivering a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Convention in Florida, he claimed that “‘stop and frisk’ works and it was meant for problems like Chicago.”
Since entering the primary, Bloomberg has apologized for supporting stop and frisk, which disproportionately targeted men of color. He’s since said that he regrets the impact the policy had and that “no one should ever feel targeted or judged by the color of their skin, especially by police.”
“I was wrong,” Bloomberg said in November. “And I am sorry."
In a statement posted to his campaign website, Bloomberg claimed the "inherited" practice of stop and frisk was part of an effort to reduce gun violence and insisted he cut it back by "95 percent" by the time he left office.
"I regret that and I have apologized," he said. "And I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities."