Bloomberg downplays new Nuzzi TV show

Bloomberg killed a splashy PR rollout of Olivia Nuzzi’s new show, “Working Capital,” in response to a campaign against the journalist by Democrats, reports Ben Smith of Semafor.

Smith writes, “The interview show, announced with great fanfare in July, wound up being unceremoniously released on Bloomberg’s television network and is available online. But Max reports (and Nuzzi confirms) that plans for a higher-profile rollout of the Bloomberg Originals bet were abruptly scotched after a Nuzzi article about the ‘conspiracy of silence’ around President Joe Biden’s age.

“Her article prompted a group of Democrats on Twitter to call her a racist and tweet at Bloomberg demanding she be fired. They based their claims on some tweets from the Obama years which, if you had no sense of humor or hadn’t been following United States politics at the time, could be understood out of context as being expressions of furious anti-Obama sentiment. (They were, in fact, Twitter jokes. This is too dumb to explain in detail, but here’s a representative sample.)

“A Bloomberg spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s reaction, but the episode is a microcosm of one of the real struggles for corporate media right now, which is looking for a new generation of stars with social media followings, big personalities, and clear identities. People who have built that kind of following and reputation over the last decade have probably made out-of-context jokes, or even said actually regrettable things, through the years. Their corporate employers prefer ciphers — or at least careful television professionals. It’s hard to have it both ways.”

Read more here.