JPMorgan Chase Not Akin to Nazis, Report Finds

An outside review of Bloomberg L.P.’s practices found that a controversial report that compared the damage in an Italian town after a bad deal with JPMorgan to the fallout from the Nazis’ occupation in World War II went “too far.”

The 2011 article, which JPMorgan complained about at the time and Bloomberg declined to change, has long been a sore spot between the bank and Bloomberg and was recently mentioned in a New York Times article that focused on the friction between Wall Street and Bloomberg.

“In one of the great campaigns of World War II, Monte Cassino was completely destroyed in a wave of battles that claimed 75,000 casualties and the lives of hundreds of townspeople. To suggest that a bond deal gone sour, curtailing daycare for 60 children and services for the poor, is comparable to the terror and cataclysm of war is inconsistent with BN’s high standards,” Clark Hoyt, an editor-at-large at Bloomberg News and a former public editor of The Times, found in his review, which focused on the relationship between Bloomberg’s news and commercial operations.

Mr. Hoyt’s report stemmed from complaints made earlier this year by Goldman Sachs and other banks that Bloomberg journalists could see what the banks thought was private information about the way their employees were using their Bloomberg data terminals.

The complaints caused an uproar on Wall Street and prompted Bloomberg to conduct a review of its operations. In addition to Mr. Hoyt’s report, Bloomberg commissioned a separate but related study that confirmed the bank’s suspicions, that Bloomberg journalists were able to see information that was not available to other users of the Bloomberg terminals and that this information was occasionally used to inform Bloomberg’s articles. Reporters no longer have access to this information, the report found.

Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan, said Wednesday that Bloomberg “handled all aspects of the review very well.”

Mr. Hoyt recommends in his report that Bloomberg appoint a senior editor to handle complaints like the one from JPMorgan, and the company says it plans to do so. In addition, Bloomberg plans to adopt another recommendation that it create a newsroom standards editor. That position, Mr. Hoyt wrote, should be filled by a senior journalist who will ensure reporters adhere to high standards.

Bloomberg, however, does not plan to alter the original report about JPMorgan to address the concerns raised by Mr. Hoyt, according to a person briefed on the matter.