One of the most shameful and egregious media failures of the year has just gotten even worse for Bloomberg Law with the exposure of a new email showing that its reporter, along with the organization, dramatically misrepresented communications with the Department of Labor as part of a hit job that temporarily led to a Trump appointee’s resignation.
Far from an innocent inquiry that reporter Ben Penn presented it as, an email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act shows he asked the department accusatory questions that were clearly an effort to get appointee Leif Olson fired by falsely smearing him as an anti-Semite. Penn, misrepresenting old Facebook posts, asked whether the department found Olson “fit for government service” and whether they were OK with senior employees who made “comments that were disparaging to Jews.”
Last month, Bloomberg Law’s Penn proudly tweeted out a “scoop” that Olson, who had recently started as an adviser in the department’s Wage and Hour Division, had been forced to resign after the surfacing of Facebook posts that were described as anti-Semitic.
It was immediately quite clear, to anybody who took two seconds to read the posts, that far from being anti-Semitic, Olson was actually using sarcasm to mock anti-Semites. It was such an egregious hit piece that even liberal Jonathan Chait, a fierce critic of the Trump administration, acknowledged it was “terribly unfair.”
Luckily, sanity eventually prevailed and the Department of Labor reinstated Penn once the true nature of the posts was exposed.
At the time, however, what was particularly amazing was how little remorse was shown by Penn and Bloomberg, as they refused to back down even long after it was widely accepted that the posts were sarcastic.
Penn dug in, playing it off as if all he did was ask for comment on Facebook posts. One example: “To Leif Olson’s friends & others who take issue with this reporting, I sent a screenshot of a public FB post to DOL, seeking comment. 4 hours later I received this response: ‘Today, the Department of Labor accepted the resignation of Leif Olson effective immediately.'”
To Leif Olson’s friends & others who take issue with this reporting,
I sent a screenshot of a public FB post to DOL, seeking comment. 4 hours later I received this response: “Today, the Department of Labor accepted the resignation of Leif Olson effective immediately.” https://t.co/PZbIScDHqe— Ben Penn (@benjaminpenn) September 3, 2019
A Bloomberg spokesperson echoed Penn’s benign explanation: “We contacted the White House and the Department of Labor asking for comment on Mr. Olson’s Facebook posts. Within four hours, the Department of Labor responded that Mr. Olson had resigned,”
However, lawyer Ted Frank, a friend of Olson, filed a FOIA request on the email Penn sent the Department of Labor, and it reveals the truth was much different.
? ? ?@blaw refused to answer my questions about their abusive journalism fail on the Leif Olson story, so we FOIA’ed Penn’s emails to DOL to see how it happened. As you can see, this was a total hit job, @benjaminPenn truncated & mischaracterized the Facebook posts. pic.twitter.com/CzTsMKWUBN
— tedfrank (@tedfrank) October 3, 2019
In the email, Penn sent the Facebook posts without proper context and asked leading questions to the department. The questions rest on the assumption that the posts were in fact anti-Semitic and were clearly pushing the department toward either firing him or explaining why they are OK with anti-Semitism.
Some excerpts:
- “[W]e are focusing on an August 2016 Facebook post in which Mr. Olson made a remark that references two anti-Semitic tropes.”
- “If DOL was previously aware of it, did this post raise any flags inside the administration about whether he is fit for government service?”
- “Does the Labor Department find comments that are disparaging to Jews acceptable for a senior appointee?”
- “Olson is on a team at WHD responsible for writing some top priority regulations — will he remain in this or any other role at DOL?”
It is especially hard to be charitable to Penn given his tweets attempting to contextualize the story on the day it broke. In one revealing tweet, he wrote, “Lost in all of this is that Olson was part of a team of political appointees tasked with the heavy lift of drafting wage-hour regulations that are high priorities for Trump White House, business community. They’re now down one adviser.”
Lost in all of this is that Olson was part of a team of political appointees tasked with the heavy lift of drafting wage-hour regulations that are high priorities for Trump White House, business community. They’re now down one adviser. https://t.co/PZbIScDHqe
— Ben Penn (@benjaminpenn) September 3, 2019
It’s very hard to escape the conclusion that Penn is a reporter with an agenda. He dishonestly attempted to smear an innocent man all in the hopes that he would cripple a key division of the Trump Labor Department.
Bloomberg spent days making various updates attempting to clean up the story, not just for its treatment of the Facebook posts but also for numerous factual errors. It now has a lot more explaining to do.
