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Bloomberg LP CEO Dan Doctoroff has privately expressed frustration with founding Editor-in-Chief Matt Winkler’s Teflon status in the fallout from the company’s spying scandal.
A source said while Doctoroff has made his feelings known to some clients and colleagues, he has also indicated his hands are tied “right now” when it comes to holding Winkler’s feet to the fire for the damaging data breach.
Winkler — who wrote the company’s ethics and style handbook, “The Bloomberg Way” — has admitted that Bloomberg reporters on his watch used the company’s ubiquitous terminals to gain access to proprietary information about clients, such as when they logged on and what functions they used.
Sources present at a recent discussion with Doctoroff said he indicated that he wanted to hold Winkler more accountable for the offending practices but believed that his options were limited because of internal politics and long-held allegiances.
Winkler maintains close ties with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who tapped the then-Wall Street Journal reporter nearly three decades ago to build out the company’s bare-bones news operation. Bloomberg is now one of the largest news organizations in the world, with 2,400 reporters and editors.
A spokesman for Bloomberg said any suggestion that Doctoroff is frustrated with Winkler is “simply untrue.”
One insider said that while “everyone is frustrated” with the snooping scandal, Winkler is still viewed as one of the pillars of the organization.
Doctoroff is also tight with the mayor, who is known to be loyal to his friends and employees to a fault.
Doctoroff, the former deputy mayor under Bloomberg, joined his media empire as president in 2008, and became CEO two years ago.
“We think this is a delicate situation to manage for Doctoroff,” said one source who was present at the meeting.
Sources said the mayor is fuming about the spying scandal largely because he was told that issues that had been a bugaboo in the past had been addressed.
A spokesman for the mayor declined to comment.
Sources speculated that Winkler could end up losing some of his oversight of the news operation down the line.
Bloomberg is currently in the process of conducting an independent review of the data breach and has hired former IBM boss Sam Palmisano to lead it.
Bloomberg said it intends to make the findings of the review public in response to some client concerns that the company had yet to commit to sharing the results. Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve are among those that have raised concerns about the company’s snooping.
To be sure, the professional downfall of the bow-tie-wearing Winkler has been predicted in the past.
In 2008, when the company hired former Time Inc. boss Norm Pearlstine to head its multimedia operations, rumors were rife that Winkler would be sidelined. It didn’t come to pass.