New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg could further combine his political and business ambitions by purchasing the Financial Times Group, which includes the Financial Times newspaper and a stake in half of the Economist, according the Daily Beast.
Yet Bloomberg, who controls his own vast media empire—and has openly disregarded his vow to step away from it while in office—has rarely been taken to task for his myriad conflicts of interest, despite having his own super PAC and flirting with presidential runs.
The billionaire media-mogul and politico was previously discussed by the Washington Free Beacon’s Editor-in-Chief Matthew Continetti who noted that billionaires who fund liberal media outlets tend to get a pass from the liberal media:
If you are a millionaire or billionaire looking to avoid negative or critical or even remotely credulous press coverage, stop what you are doing, invest in a media property, and employ liberal writers and editors. You will probably lose a lot of money, but the intangible benefits of slavish praise and deflected criticism will be priceless.
The Bloomberg empire already consists of Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Government, a television network, and an opinion website.
While all of this has made Bloomberg obscenely wealthy, landing him at No. 10 on the annual Forbes list of richest Americans, it hasn’t satiated his desire for greater control of the news industry. The Times reports that Bloomberg had previously "commissioned a study to assess whether The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times or The Financial Times would potentially become available" for purchase. At the least, the endless rounds of stories about Bloomberg’s ambitions are a reason for reporters elsewhere not to go out of their way to bite the hand that could one day feed them.