Bloomberg News has failed to win an award, and that is obvious proof of fraud! So goes the logic of Bloomberg boss Matthew Winkler, the bow-tied tyrant and enemy of humans. Bloomberg ran an epic investigative piece on the insurance industry that generated both acclaim and a lot of pushback. The industry said the piece was full of errors; an investigation found no errors; the Deadline Club of New York eventually named the story as a finalist for several awards, but it didn't win any. Right that second, Matthew Winkler's bow tie perked up. He knows a setup when he sees it!:

Winkler wrote a three-page letter to the Deadline Club alleging that the club didn't give the story an award because they were cowed by the insurance industry. What other reason could there possibly be? Keep in mind: the story ran. The industry gave a list of objections, which were investigated by the Deadline Club in conjunction with Bloomberg. The story was a finalist, but not a winner. From Winkler's complaining letter:

During the conference call, Deadline Club officials said they accepted that Bloomberg had not made factual errors. However, that was not the end of the conversation. Two Club officials said they would have edited parts of "Insurance Hoax" differently. The conference call was not supposed to have been a referendum on Bloomberg's editing.

Over the years, this year included, Bloomberg News has been honored to receive awards from the Deadline Club, which we have had every reason to view as an organization run by professionals. We don't know why "Insurance Hoax" failed to win any of the four awards for which it was a finalist. We do know the process by which the stories were judged was irregular, opaque and unethical. We especially question the Club's preemptive guilty verdict rendered in an unsigned memo that parroted the insurance industry's positions.

Or maybe it just lost.

[CJR]