During the morning of the Wall Street pandemonium, X’s popular news aggregator known as Walter Bloomberg, posted a false report declaring that President Trump is considering a 90-day suspension on his controversial tariff proposal.
The news wasn’t true, but index funds like Dow Jones rose rapidly before they turned the course back in a few minutes. This type of volatility makes more sense than the typical rise and decline of inventory. That’s why false reports are gaining a lot of attention.
The Walter Bloomberg account is not affiliated with news organizations and has nothing to do with Bloomberg News, but for a long time the account has been considered a reliable source of technical and business news. Rather than writing its own posts, Walter Bloomberg has publicly posted news headlines when it hits the Bloomberg terminal.
Bloomberg Terminal is an expensive subscription-only service used by financial experts for real-time market data, including news headlines. Sometimes headlines from stores like CNBC and Bloomberg hit terminals before the story is published online, making accounts like Walter Bloomberg useful followers for quick news.
On Monday, a series of reporting errors from CNBC and Reuters were subsequently amplified by X’s Walter Bloomberg account, apparently directly affected the stock market on an already chaotic day.
A headline posted by Walter Bloomberg states that it was removed because it was not true.
The White House’s rapid response team denied that Kevin Hassett, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, issued these statements, citing the now-deleted post of Walter Bloomberg.
To prove their points, this White House account shared a clip from Fox News.
In response to billionaire Bill Ackman’s appeal, appealing for the Trump administration to launch a 90-day suspension on tariff plans, Fox’s anchor asked Hassett, “Would you like a 90-day suspension? Do you think about that?”
Hassett replied, “I think the president will decide what he will decide, but I urge everyone, especially Bill, to ease the rhetoric a little.”
When asked where he got the news on X, Walter Bloomberg said the headline he posted was from Reuters.
Walter Bloomberg did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
In a statement, Reuters told TechCrunch: “Reuters painted from the headlines on CNBC, saying on April 7th White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said President Donald Trump was considering suspending tariffs for 90 days in all countries except China.
So Walter Bloomberg turned his finger at Reuters, which then turned his finger at CNBC.
A CNBC spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement: “We were following the news of market movements in real time, so we aired unconfirmed information on the banner. Reporters quickly corrected the air.”
Walter Bloomberg broke the typical robot tone with a simple “WTF” and screenshots a terminal report from CNBC that stated that the White House was unaware of plans for a 90-day suspension.
The Wall Street trader may have seen the news at the terminal itself, not from a Walter Bloomberg aggregator. But people outside the financial sector rely on explanations like Walter Bloomberg to mimic quick news access at terminals.
Source link
