The Voice has an odd, incomplete piece this week on six former employees of Bloomberg LP whose silence, mostly about discrimination and harassment claims, seems to have been bought in legal settlements.
Several of these were much discussed in Mike’s first campaign, and will surprise nobody. The court settlements, like Mike’s personal gifts to friends and employees, always private, are certainly part of a general muffling of criticism that his money accomplishes. On the other hand, having billions of dollars and a reputation for quiet payouts does make one more likely to get sued.
The Voice adds one story about Bloomberg LP that is impossible to evaluate because the Voice won’t print what it knows.
That’s the tale of Burton Waddy. “A top black executive at the company until June 2005, he left deeply disturbed about comments he regarded as racial that were allegedly made by Bloomberg.”
The Voice piece goes on to suggest that its former reporter won’t hand over the tape and that, while Waddy has repeated the contents to others, the Voice won’t print them because its sources refused to discuss them on the record “for fear of hurting Waddy.”
Now this is either a very big story — Mike making racist remarks? — or absolutely nothing. So it seems odd to float it like this, at the bottom of a story, and in the form of innuendo.
