What happens when a billionaire finance and media mogul announces he is running for president? How does his media empire avoid running into countless conflicts of interest? Well, in the case of Bloomberg News, which is the sole domain of Michael Bloomberg who officially entered the 2020 presidential race on Sunday morning, the company's editor-in-chief just announced that it will extend its long-running policy of not doing any investigative reporting on its owner to all of his Democratic competitors who are also running for president.

Or, as Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait put it, "We cannot treat Mike's Democratic competitors differently from him."

And that's why handing America's free media into the hands of a handful of organizations and a few billionaires is generally a bad idea, because sooner or later one or all of them decide that the world will be better if they run it, and the conflicts of interest explode, which means far less coverage of precisely those who need the most investigation at precisely the most important time - just when they are about to be elected president.

To be sure, members of the press were stunned by this development, including Bloomberg competitors such as Reuters...

Wowsers. Bloomberg News will not be investigating Bloomberg or any Democrat in the primary and senior members of the editorial board are joining his campaign: https://t.co/u0rxLGZAWZ — Amanda Becker (@AmandaBecker) November 24, 2019

... as well as Daily Mail's David Martosko.

How do you wrap your mind around this? I can't.



Editorial board members joining the boss's campaign? A pledge to not investigate him? A parallel pledge to not investigate any other Democrats?



Is that newsgathering or a campaign contribution? What's the in-kind value of this? https://t.co/jD9DdvjE5L — David Martosko (@dmartosko) November 24, 2019

Bernie Sanders' speechwriter David Sirota had a good take...

Every reporter covering 2020 knows that if they write a story seriously scrutinizing Mike Bloomberg, they risk enraging a person who owns a sizable segment of the media job market. It’s a very tough situation for journalists, and probably not a great dynamic for democracy. — David Sirota (@davidsirota) November 23, 2019

... but it was Bloomberg's own ex Washington Bureau Chief who had the harshest condemnation:

For the record, I was presenting with a near identical “memo” during his 2016 flirtation. And I was very clear that I would quit the second it ever saw the light of day. — Megan Murphy (@meganmurp) November 24, 2019

On the other hand, while Bloomberg News will no longer cover any of the potential Democratic presidents, period, its "P&I team will continue to investigate the Trump administration, as the government of the day", albeit with the running disclaimer that its boss sees himself as Trump's biggest challenger. Good luck with objective reporting there.

What happens in the odd chance that Mike Bloomberg does win the nomination, at which point the billionaire will effectively have a massive "objective" newsroom as a PR weapon? According to Bloomberg News, it is still determining if and how it will continue to investigate the Trump administration if Bloomberg were to win the Democratic nomination and run against Trump in the general election. Until then, however, Bloomberg will clearly continue to focus on the president who for better or worse, remains the biggest traffic draw not only for Bloomberg but for every other media outlet out there.

All this was revealed in a memo to Bloomberg employees sent on Sunday morning after Bloomberg officially announced his candidacy, in which editor-in-chief John Micklethwait said also that:

Going forward, the company will disclose that Bloomberg owns the company in all of its stories about the election.

If other outlets publish stories about Bloomberg, Bloomberg Media would "either publish those articles in full, or summarize them for our readers - and we will not hide them."

He noted that the company is following the same policy that it has applied to its coverage of corporate rivals CNBC and Reuters. Bloomberg doesn't investigate those companies, but it does report on the news of the day if it involves them.

He said that Bloomberg News has already assigned a reporter to follow Bloomberg's presidential campaign, just as the company did when Bloomberg was running for New York City mayor.

Bloomberg News would suspend its editorial board and that David Shipley, Tim O'Brien and other editorial board members will take a leave of absence to join Bloomberg's presidential campaign. Opinion columnists will continue to produce pieces, but editorial board bylines will cease.

The full memo is below: