The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Dalio’s ‘fake news’ charge raises questions
It’s not unusual for billionaire hedge fund founder Ray Dalio to feud with the Wall Street Journal.
This time, Dalio and his Westport-based Bridgewater Associates is in a dispute that gets at the core of a national debate over the role of the media.
Echoing the rallying cry of President Donald Trump, Dalio took to his preferred platform, LinkedIn, to attack the Journal in a post titled “The Wall Street Journal’s Fake and Distorted News,” a headline he first used three weeks before Trump was inaugurated in 2017.
Dalio’s most recent diatribe against the “fake news media” was in response to a Jan. 31 article titled “Ray Dalio Is Still Driving His $160 Billion Hedge-Fund Machine,” which details issues with Dalio’s 10-year succession plan — now in its ninth year — as well as executive turnover at Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund.
The article cites anonymous current and former employees who are harshly critical of Dalio’s management style and unwillingness to step down. Bridgewater responded to all of the allegations within the article.
Dalio did not cite any specific errors in the article or offer any corrections in his 1,100 word post, and instead criticized the Journal’s approach to reporting and opined on what he views as the flaws in “journalism today.”
Dalio, a Greenwich resident who founded Bridgewater in 1975, said the article is “filled with intentional factual errors,” and called it a classic case of “false and distorted media.”
He alleged that the authors of the piece, Rachael Levy and Rob Copeland, “had a goal and story in mind long before they had any facts. They are investigative journalists that The Wall Street Journal hires to dig up dirt on successful people and companies and to write negative articles about them.”
He suggested Copeland had a conflict of interest in writing the piece because he had previously interviewed for a job at Bridgewater.
In an emailed response, Steve Severinghaus, senior director of communications for Dow Jones & Co., the parent of the Wall Street Journal, said, “Rob Copeland
and Rachael Levy are well respected journalists and their reporting is fair and accurate. Responses from Bridgewater Associates were solicited well in advance of publication and included in the final article. Mr. Dalio is simply complaining about factual reporting he does not like.”
Bridgewater declined to comment on the record, but has said that Dalio has stepped back as CEO, in accordance with his succession plan. Bridgewater is not a public company and therefore is not required to disclose information about its operations.
One question is whether the spat is just part of the age-old give-and-take between powerful people and the media outlets that report on them, or something more in an age when institutions have their own direct line to the public — and are quicker to attack the media. An example is Trump’s Twitter account, through which he frequently communicates directly with the public.
“Journalists, particularly business journalists, get attacked all the time from CEO’s and very powerful people when they write something the powerful person doesn’t like,” said Chris Roush, dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden and a former professor of business journalism at the University of North Carolina
“I think most Wall Street Journal readers realize that the journal is the top echelon of business journalism and they’re not going to publish anything that hasn’t been seriously vetted and checked for accuracy.”
Roush said the “fake news” cry, which originated with Trump, likely won’t be harmful to the Wall Street Journal’s credibility or to Dalio.
“He’s preaching to the choir. He’s preaching to his investors the same way Donald Trump preaches to his supporters and the people who already believe that,” Roush said. “On the other hand I don’t think it’s harmful to the Wall Street Journal either. I think it’s very positive to the Wall Street Journal that he is taking the time out of his day to write about this article that they wrote, which just drives people to want to read the article.”