In a dark day for business journalism, “The Insurance Hoax”–a pure hatchet job in the September 2007 issue of “Bloomberg Markets” about the industry's claims-handling practices–won this year's New York Press Club award for consumer reporting.

I thought I had heard the last of this biased piece when I spoke out against it after the Bloomberg cover story was nominated for the prestigious Daniel Pearl Award for Investigative Reporting, given out by the New York City Deadline Club–an affiliate of The Society Of Professional Journalists.

As a member of SPJ (I love their motto: “If the press didn't tell you, who would?), I wrote an e-mail to the group complaining about the nomination, noting that the publication had failed to give insurers a fair shake or a meaningful chance to respond to the allegations raised, while declining to correct the factual errors pointed out by the Insurance Information Institute.

I urged all of you to write as well. I hope you spoke out in defense of your own industry.

I never did hear back from SPJ, but I was relieved to learn that at least the offending article did not, in fact, win. At the time, in my May 16 blog, I wrote that “maybe there is some justice in this world after all.”

Maybe not.

One problem is that I did not know the Bloomberg piece was up for a Press Club award, thus never had a chance to protest its nomination. I am not a member of the Club, thus did not receive any e-mails or publicity when the nominations were announced. The Deadline Club, on the other hand, did publicize its award nominations to members, so I heard about it in time to get in my two cents about its flaws.

Like a bad penny, this article keeps popping up to haunt the insurance industry. While insurer performance on claims is anything but stellar–especially when it came to Hurricane Katrina–the Bloomberg article's depiction of the industry as some kind of evil empire was over the top. It reinforced every negative stereotype about the business.

What are you going to do? At least Bloomberg didn't win a Pulitzer Prize…yet…

Special Reports /

Hatchet Job Takes Journalism Award After All!

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