彭博社被指责监视客户活动

One of the world’s biggest news agencies has taken a knock to its reputation this week. It was revealed that some of Bloomberg News’ reporters monitored client activities on Bloomberg terminals. Now many of those high powered clients are asking ’What exactly did Bloomberg reporters see?

The Vatican,the Federal Reserve,the Treasury Department,they all use Bloomberg terminals- -terminals that provide real-time information on financial news, market data and wire stories for a subscription fee of around 24,000 dollars, per terminal, a year. Financial writer and money manager, Stephen Leeb, is a user. He’s concerned about the revelation that Bloomberg reporters have been monitoring user activity on the terminal.

"If they’re willing to do this, obviously they’re willing to stretch their authority." said Stephen Leeb, Money Manager of Leeb Group.

The Federal Reserve and other central banks like the ECB and Germany’s Bundesbank are looking more deeply into the matter to find out what kind of client information Bloomberg reporters’ accessed. Bloomberg says at no time was trading information accessible. What they could see was logon information and broader categories of information that clients used. The company admits these have been common practices since the 1990s.

A month ago it changed its policy to forbid them. Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief, Matthew Winkler, wrote in an editorial: "Our reporters should not have access to any data considered proprietary. I am sorry they did. The error is inexcusable." That’s good enough for Leeb who thinks Bloomberg’s actions are not as severe as those of News Corp which was recently embroiled in a hacking scandal.

"I don’t think this is going to really harm Bloomberg. I probably wouldn’t even consider dropping the terminal. I might consider being a little more wary." said Leeb.Perhaps the biggest damage is to Bloomberg’s relationship with its financial clients, which could end hurting its bottom line. Almost 85 percent of Bloomberg’s 2012 revenue came from its terminal business.