So there are 17 people running for president of the United States in the upcoming election, and Bloomberg News says it's going to cover just one of them?

Good call by the Trump campaign to throw the media organ out from the press pool.

According to Fox News:

Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on Sunday sent a memo to staffers, obtained by The Washington Post, in which he declared the newsroom will "continue our tradition of not investigating Mike (and his family and foundation)" and that it would extend the same policy to his opponents in the Democratic primaries, but not to President Trump. Micklethwait added that "if other credible journalistic institutions" publish investigative work regarding the former New York City mayor, Bloomberg News will either publish or summarize it for readers. Micklethwait added that Bloomberg News will continue to investigate President Trump and announced that the unsigned editorials will be suspended while some members take a leave of absence to work on their boss' campaign.

Most of us can give Bloomberg some kind of pass for not covering Mike Bloomberg himself based on his ownership of the news agency, although it should. If Mike Bloomberg got drunk at a company Christmas party ten years ago and said outrageous stuff, maybe it would be unfair to print such a story, given the staff's privileged access to the information. I remember the yellings when another media owner, Steve Forbes, was called to give up ownership of his company, Forbes magazine, based on his run for president in 1996, and Forbes magazine doesn't even cover presidential news. Rule number one at Forbes, where I used to work: "We don't chase news."

Now we have this lunacy from Bloomberg News, promising not only to give Mike Bloomberg a pass, but extending that "courtesy" to 15 other Democrats while focusing all of its energy on President Trump, or rather, Getting Trump. That's quite an in-kind gift to Democrats right there. Bloomberg News has protested, disingenuously claiming:

The accusation of bias couldn't be further from the truth. We have covered Donald Trump fairly and in an unbiased way since he became a candidate in 2015 and will continue to do so despite the restrictions imposed by the Trump campaign.

A former Bloomberg editor told the real story: that the move was "not journalism," and she says she would have resigned her job if an order like that had ever come to her from on high when she was in the saddle. That's the response of a credible journalist, not a Democratic operative with a byline.

Now, one possibility here for such a move is that maybe the Bloomberg editors estimated that if they cover everyone but the touchy Bloomberg, they might be giving other Democrats free publicity at Mike's expense.

But with the vow to cover Trump and only Trump, they have effectively transformed themselves from a news agency into a political opposition research outfit — trash-diggers, blackmailers, and public relations agents, complete with Steele dossiers full of scurrilous information from enemy sources.

Think I'm exaggerating? Recall that Bloomberg News, via its Bloomberg Law adjunct, was the news agency that put out this sleazy smear on a young Trump staffer and took more than a month to retract the mendacious story. More than a month! And unlike a hapless Newsweek reporter, who got fired over the weekend for lazily reporting that President Trump was going golfing based on a black car decoy going into a golf course, while he was really visiting Afghanistan (stupid, but not a firing offense by any reasonable standard, given that the reporter only got fooled, and didn't mendaciously make up stuff), Bloomberg Law kept the sleazy little liar, Ben Penn, on its staff, still going strong, still living his leftist values. That tells you a lot about what Bloomberg News's standards have sunk to and what its bias level is going to be.

Anyone who would believe these people that they intend to cover Trump and only Trump fairly would be a fool to believe them.

They've effectively made themselves into another Fusion GPS, devoted solely to opposition research to benefit Democrats, no matter what the story. Kamala Harris campaign falling apart? Not gonna cover it. Pete Buttigieg having problems with black voters? Not gonna notice. Julián Castro doxxing someone? Won't notice. Bernie Sanders having another heart attack? Not going to report it. Liz Warren cooking up another lie about her past? Free pass. Joe Biden flashing some kids? No notice. You can't have actual news if you cover just one side of the story, or in Bloomberg News's case, just one out of 16 candidates. Seriously, Bloomberg News began as a news outfit focused closely on accuracy of its story because stock and bond traders were trading off their reliable information. Would you trade on Bloomberg's incomplete coverage if you were a bond trader?

Here's the other thing: Fox News reports that Mike Bloomberg is already deputizing Bloomberg News staff to his campaign, which would leave the distinct possibility that any remainers still in the news agency may be effectively be dispatched as spies against the Trump campaign on behalf of the Bloomberg campaign, given the incestuousness of the already seen arrangements. Every news agency's staff is pretty close and affectionate to its owner, I've worked at many, and there were none whose staff that didn't have a kind of closeness to the owners, not one. It's how these things work. And now we have Bloomie vowing to turn the news agency he built into a spy and public relations outfit to benefit all Democrats at the expense of Trump.

Darn right the Trumpsters should have banned this opposition-research outfit from its press flights and pool reports. Let 'em get their news from Reuters. Give the slot to someone else, say, the Daily Caller or Breitbart News if Fox News doesn't already have a space. Bloomberg News's whinings and protestations of fairness are just plain disgusting.

If they want to be Fusion GPS, maybe they ought to join Fusion GPS. The Democrats, like Bloomberg themselves, also have lots of money for them.