Interviews with more than 30 current and former Bloomberg employees paint a picture of an aggressive, hyperkinetic organization that not only tolerated but encouraged an unusual symbiotic relationship between the company’s news operation and its business interests, including the use of the terminals to break news.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/business/media/bloomberg-reporters-tactics-become-crucial-issue-for-company.html?hp
Many of these reporters say they routinely used the terminal’s function, called the UUID command, to find background information on subscribers, including contact information, when the subscriber had last logged on, and weekly statistics on how often customers used a particular function, like equity shares or currency markets.
Reporters also say they talked to their business-side colleagues to gain early access to company announcements, including company releases and bond prospectuses about to be made public, and queried Bloomberg’s own help desk to find out what pages and features customers might have been using.
“We were told again and again and again, find ways to use what’s on the terminal to write stories,” said one former Bloomberg reporter who, like most employees, was required to sign a strict nondisclosure agreement that prohibits them from speaking about the company. “They never said ‘Oh, please be careful and don’t breach any kind of privacy,’ ”
Bloomberg reporters looked at customer information went beyond the Bloomberg terminal. Reporters have, for example, contacted colleagues on a team known as “fundamentals” that processes information that subscribers distribute over the terminals. That information can include analysts’ reports, company announcements and bond prospectuses.
“These are subscribers paying a lot of money for information that will help them make money,”