Hilary Sargent has a site called ChartGirl where she makes charts explaining complicated news events.

The site has been named to Time’s 50 Best Websites of 2013.

A bunch of the charts are about media-related news, including one she posted Sunday on the Bloomberg spying scandal.

See a larger version here.

Bloomberg editor in chief Matt Winkler writes that the error allowing the news service’s journalists to see information about its clients on its terminals is “inexcusable.”

Winkler writes, “As we’ve grown, and as data privacy has become a central concern to our clients, we should go above and beyond in protecting data, especially when we have even the appearance of impropriety. And that’s why we’ve made these recent changes to what reporters can access.

“This leads to a second point lost in much of this weekend’s conversation: The protection of important customer data has been essential at Bloomberg since our founding more than 30 years ago. We have never compromised the integrity of that data in our reporting.

“At no time did reporters have access to trading, portfolio, monitor, blotter or other related systems. Nor did they have access to clients’ messages to one another. They couldn’t see the stories that clients were reading or the securities clients might be looking at.

“Like all other Bloomberg employees, our reporters, upon hiring, enter into a confidentiality agreement that strictly prohibits them from discussing non-public Bloomberg documents and proprietary information about the company and its clients in their reporting.”

Read more here.

David Schlesinger, the former editor in chief of Reuters, writes about the Bloomberg scandal where his former rival has been criticized for allowing its reporters to access information on how Wall Street bankers are using their Bloomberg terminals.

Schlesinger writes, “One is what everyone has been focussing on: the fact that Bloomberg in addition to looking at aggregated usage data like any modern, business-oriented media company should, seems to have crossed the line into looking at companies and individuals. In addition to the privacy concerns, there’s the very real issue that trading strategies could be compromised if ever the usage data got too granular (Has company A stopped reading about China and started reading about Turkey? Does it seem like company B is interested in fixed income instead of equities these days?)

“But the other is about companies that get too big and too arrogant… and about how when they stumble there’s an unmistakable Schadenfreude. There’s a lot of piling on at the moment. Competitors feel glee (and relief); clients sense an opportunity to renegotiate; fellow journalists jump at the chance to take the powerful down a peg.

“My guess is that this will be an important milestone in Bloomberg’s maturation as a company. The necessary lines between commerce and journalism will be reaffirmed (But let’s remember how brave Bloomberg was already in publishing its bravura China series at the risk of considerable financial harm). Ethical boundaries will be rethought and retaught, hopefully throughout the industry.

“And Bloomberg’s news and terminal business will in the end continue to be judged on the one question that Wall Street really cares about: ‘Does it help us make money?’”

Read more here.

William Launder of The Wall Street Journal writes that Bloomberg journalists used to go on sales calls to meet with some of the financial news and data organization’s largest clients — a reason why they had access to information about Wall Street bankers.

Launder writes, “Mr. Doctoroff described the terminals business and news operation as complementary: the large and lucrative terminals business helps pay for an editorial service that in turn draws subscribers by delivering market-moving news.

“But there is a ‘flip side’ to the business model too, Mr. Doctoroff said. ‘When you assure editorial independence, your reporters also do stories on very important clients that can create a level of discomfort sometimes. That’s the way it is, and we have to live with that tension,’ he said. Mr. Doctoroff said a strict division separates Bloomberg’s sales department from its news operations.

“Bloomberg isn’t alone in its practice of recruiting journalists to go on visits to customers. Senior editors from Dow Jones Newswires have occasionally participated in sales meetings to help explain different news products. Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, competes with Bloomberg in financial news and some other data services.

“A Dow Jones spokesperson confirmed that senior editors sometimes participate in sales meetings, but are careful to respect the company’s strict division between the news and business operations.”

Read more here.

Adam Penenberg, the editor of PandoDaily.com, writes that the revelations that Bloomberg reporters used their terminals to snoop on Wall Street bankers is not much different than News Corp. journalists hacking into people’s phones.

Penenberg writes, “This may not sound like much, but in the hypercompetitive arena of business journalism and the even more secretive world of Wall Street it’s enough to offer a reporter leverage. Last summer, after JPMorgan Chase experienced a multi-billion trading loss, some Bloomberg reporters called the bank to find out whether the traders responsible had been fired. ‘They cited the fact that the traders had gone silent on the terminal,’ the Times reported. Reporters did the same thing with Goldman Sachs, when they sought to find out the fate of one of the firm’s partners. This time, instead of copping silence, which is what Chase did, Goldman complained, and the activities came to light.

“How different is this from News Corp. and its phone hacking scandal? With Bloomberg you have customers paying roughly $20,000 a year per terminal and rely on them to help execute trades with vast sums of money at stake. With the phone hacking scandal you had employees of Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers accessing voicemails belonging to politicians, celebrities, and the British Royal Family. They also tapped into the phones of relatives of deceased British soldiers, victims of the July 2005 London bombings, and a murdered schoolgirl.

“Hacking voicemail is illegal. In a famous case involving journalism ethics, Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Mike Gallagher hacked into voicemail belonging to executives of Chiquita Banana to help him research a damning story on the company’s labor practices in Latin America. When Chiquita threatened to sue for libel, the paper, owned by Gannet, caved and published a front-page apology for three straight days and renounced the series. Nevertheless, Gannet ended up paying Chiquita $14 million and Gallagher was convicted of unlawful interception of communications and unauthorized access to voice-mail system. Gallagher was sentenced to parole and community service and eventually a judge expunged his conviction

“If you think about it, Bloomberg reporters’ actions were not dissimilar to Gallagher and News Corp.’s. They intercepted information they were not supposed to have and gained unauthorized access to customers’ accounts. The difference: The latter is illegal. The former? It’s hard to say. Plus News Corp. employees also bribed officials to gain access to information, so on the sliminess scale Murdoch wins (or loses, depending on your point of view).”

Read more here. Just to be clear, the Bloomberg reporters did not have access to sensitive personal information about the Wall Street bankers.

Zach Seward of Quartz.com writes about the culture at Bloomberg that would allow its journalists to access information about its financial data clients.

Seward writes, “It’s not as though any of this justifies Bloomberg reporters snooping on customer terminal usage, but it should help explain how someone—indeed, hundreds of people—at the company could do it without batting an eye. And it points to a tension between Bloomberg’s culture of openness and its intense secrecy to the outside world. At Bloomberg, transparency only goes as far as the door. To the rest of the world, the privately held company is more black box than fish bowl.

“The confidentiality agreement that every employee must sign — including reporters, which is unusual in the media industry — is just part of it. They also generally must agree not to say anything critical about the company while employed or after leaving. Bloomberg staffers are genuinely terrified of talking about their company to anyone who doesn’t work there, a fear that was recently justified when Bloomberg immediately fired its social media editor after his private conversations, in which he called the company a ‘total mess,’ leaked online. When a Bloomberg staffer wanted to rat on his ‘Big Brother’ employer to gossip blog Gawker last year, he wrote it all down on paper rather than create a digital record.

“As a result, the public doesn’t hear much from Bloomberg LP, outside of occasional updates on terminal sales. In a sense, the paradox of Bloomberg’s transparency and secrecy actually describes its business model quite well: Data comes into the company — as much as possible, from wherever possible — but it doesn’t leave because, at Bloomberg, information is money.”

Read more here.

Some of Bloomberg LP‘s biggest customers on Wall Street are re-examining their agreements with the financial data and news company to see how much information Bloomberg employees can access from desktop terminals, reports Tom Lowry of CNBC.

Lowry writes, “At its core, the controversy underscores the paradox of the 32-year-old Bloomberg LP, a privately-held company that is vigilant in not disclosing information about its own finances and operations while generating $8 billion a year in revenue providing and collecting massive amounts of data. The terminal, with its countless functions, may just serve as a window into Wall Street’s second-to-second operations. While coveted by traders and other professionals as an indispensable tool, the terminal and its ubiquity in the financial sector may turn this into a much bigger headache for Bloomberg, Tabb said.

“Meanwhile, the controversy has Wall Street buzzing. One hedge-fund manager, who wished to remain anonymous, described the Bloomberg practice as ‘shocking,’ and he has asked his lawyers to review his agreement with Bloomberg to determine what kind of usage information Bloomberg can access from his fund’s terminal.  ‘My initial reaction was a bit of schadenfreude. Like, finally, Goldman’s getting spied on. But then I realized, while it’s fine to spy on Goldman, they could be spying on me,’ he said.

“A source at JPMorgan Chase, who also wished to remain anonymous, said that several Bloomberg reporters have used data about when traders at the firm log into their terminals as the basis for stories about the bank. ‘They were quite open about it. They’d say, ‘We see your Whale trader hasn’t logged in three days. Has he been fired?” the person said. Bloomberg reporters once asked if JPMorgan was pulling back in a certain market segment based on the fact that several traders in that area had not been logging in regularly.

“‘They were trying to figure out our strategy based on who was logging in. That was disturbing,’ the person said. JPMorgan complained to the reporters involved but did not raise the issue with Bloomberg executives.”

Read more here.

Executives at Bloomberg LP have known about journalists using the company’s terminals to spy on clients at least since September 2011, reports Peter Lauria of BuzzFeed.

Lauria reports, “That month, Erik Schatzker, an anchor at Bloomberg TV and host of ‘Market Makers,’ was reprimanded for making on-air comments about using terminal data to track the activities of at least one story subject, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

“One source said the matter was a very big deal internally but was handled quietly.

“‘All the terminal guys freaked out,’ said this source, referring to Bloomberg’s army of salespeople who sell its $20,000 signature product. Bloomberg’s 315,000 terminal subscribers, not its news operation, make up the vast majority of its revenue, which last year totaled $7.9 billion.

“Schatzker declined comment, as did a Bloomberg representative, and a clip of Schatzker making the comment couldn’t immediately be located.

“Though no one outside Bloomberg’s Manhattan headquarters complained about Schatzker’s slip, executives at the time said they would disable the function that allowed journalists to access certain client data, said one source.”

Read more here. The practice of Bloomberg journalists tracking client information on the terminals has been criticized in recent weeks by some Wall Street banks, and Bloomberg has now blocked that information from its editorial staff.

Both the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department are examining the extent to which Bloomberg-terminal usage by top officials might have been tracked by Bloomberg journalists, CNBC has learned.

Steve Liesman of CNBC reports, “A Fed spokesperson told CNBC that the central bank is looking into the situation and has been in touch with Bloomberg to learn more. A source said the Treasury Department is taking similar action.

The following email that was sent to all Bloomberg LP employees globally by Daniel L. Doctoroff,  CEO and president:

Since our founding more than 30 years ago, the proper safeguarding of customer data has been a central tenet of Bloomberg’s culture.

A Bloomberg client recently raised a concern that Bloomberg News reporters had access to limited customer relationship management data through their use of the Bloomberg terminal. Although we have long made limited customer relationship data available to our journalists, we realize this was a mistake.

Having recognized this mistake, we took immediate action. Last month we changed our policy so that all reporters only have access to the same customer relationship data available to our clients. Additionally, we decided to further centralize our data security efforts by appointing Steve Ross, one of our most senior executives, to the new position of Client Data Compliance Officer. Steve is responsible for reviewing and, if necessary, enhancing protocols which among other things will continue to ensure that our news operations never have access to confidential customer data.

To be clear, the limited customer relationship data previously available to our reporters never included access to our trading, portfolio, monitor, blotter or other related systems or our clients’ messages. Moreover, reporters could not see news stories that clients read, or the securities they viewed. Bloomberg has very strict data security policies in place, in addition to significant and rigorous training, processes and protocols. Upon hiring, all Bloomberg employees enter into confidentiality provisions, including Bloomberg News.

Client trust is our highest priority and the cornerstone of our business, and we are deeply committed to ensuring the complete integrity and confidentiality of our clients’ data in all situations and at all times.