Bloomberg Law ordered its staffers covering the Department of Labor to refrain from sharing a story on the reinstatement of Leif Olson, an employee at the agency.
Washington Post media critic Eric Wemple obtained an excerpt of an email sent to staffers Wednesday night. The directive referred to a story about Olson’s reinstatement at the agency and told staffers to refrain from mentioning the story or Olson on social media.
Olson had resigned a day earlier after Bloomberg Law reporter Ben Penn began questioning the Labor Department about remarks Olson made in a 2016 Facebook post. Penn had characterized the comments as anti-Semitic.
“You may have heard that Leif Olson, the subject of our story yesterday, will rejoin the Labor Department. The agency announced it this morning, and we are about [to] post a story on it,” the directive from an editor at Bloomberg said.
“Please do not tweet out the story or about the story (or use any other social media to post anything). And really, please do not tweet even generally about Leif Olson coming back to the department, or engage with anyone on social media about it. That is only likely to invite more Twitter-rage,” the directive said.
After Bloomberg Law’s original article on Olson’s Facebook post was published Tuesday, numerous media outlets and critics accused Penn of mischaracterizing or blatantly lying about the intention behind Olson’s comments.
Olson’s Facebook post mocked Paul Nehlen for losing a campaign against then-House Speaker Paul Ryan. Olson’s post said Ryan had “suffered a massive, historic, emasculating 70-point victory.”
One commenter jokingly accused Olson of being a “neocon” and a Jew, to which Olson responded that the charge “must be true because I’ve never heard the Lamestream Media report it, and you know they protect their own.”
Penn refused to admit wrongdoing, and Bloomberg Law refused to retract the article, pointing to Olson’s resignation as justification. The Labor Department brought Olson back to the agency Wednesday after further evaluating his 2016 Facebook post.
Bloomberg Law still did not retract the article, though the media outlet did update it to remove references to Olson’s Facebook posts characterizing them as anti-Semitic.
Bloomberg Law did not immediately return a request for comment.
