US News

Mayor Bloomberg privately fuming over snooping scandal

Mayor Bloomberg is privately fuming at the data breach that has imperiled the reputation of his global media company, according to sources.

“The mayor is very upset,” one source said of the scandal that has been dubbed Bloomberg Spygate.

A second insider said that Bloomberg made known his feelings to company executives once Goldman Sachs complained that Bloomberg News reporters were monitoring clients’ usage of the $20,000-a-year data terminals leased from Bloomberg LP.

BLOOMBERG ‘INDEPENDENT’ ADVISER MAYOR’S PAL

The mayor was said to be stunned that the news-gathering operation still had access to business-side functions two decades after the company was launched.

Yesterday, Bloomberg LP announced that former IBM chairman Samuel Palmisano — who sits on the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the mayor’s charity — had been named as an “independent adviser” to review the firm’s privacy and data standards.

Palmisano will report to the company’s board.

At the same time, Clark Hoyt, editor-at-large at Bloomberg News and formerly the public editor of The New York Times, was assigned to conduct a separate review of the news department’s relationship with the company’s business functions.

Hoyt is reporting to company CEO and president Dan Doctoroff, who used to be the mayor’s deputy for economic development at City Hall.

Sources said the reviews were not initiated by the mayor, who has been kept informed of developments by Doctoroff.

Asked whether heads would roll, one source said that depended on the outcome of the reviews.

The mayor is very protective of the company that bears his name.

The news service is so intent on being viewed as impartial that its 2,400 reporters worldwide are discouraged from using adjectives.

Any whiff of impropriety could also endanger one of the world’s most lucrative enterprises, with 315,000 subscribers who have made Bloomberg one of the wealthiest individuals in the United States.

“He’s got to worry about clients being pissed off,” said one insider.

In public, the mayor won’t comment on the controversy.

He cited an opinion from the Conflicts-of-Interest Board that prohibits him from engaging in day-to-day oversight of his company.

But the board didn’t — and couldn’t — stop the mayor from discussing anything he wanted.