WASHINGTON, May 24. /TASS/. The Russian embassy in the United States called upon the Bloomberg news agency to apologize for wrong information about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s poll ratings.
"There is a lasting impression that articles in Bloomberg are written to promote fake graphs and create sustainable false visual images about the ‘negative dynamics’ in Russia," the embassy said in a Facebook post. "This time the object of fraud was President Putin's ‘poll ratings.’"
"With reference to the Russian Public Opinion Research Center [wciom.com], a chart is built according to which the indicators are 27%," the post says. "The editors of Bloomberg continue to show complete disrespect for its readers. They probably hope that their audience will not check the source and find a real level of trust 67.9%."
"We count on the integrity of the editorial board. We urge them to show professionalism and objectivity, place real indicators of trust and apologize to their audience for another piece of misinformation," the embassy said.
Previous cases
On Tuesday, the embassy criticized another Bloomberg article for using incorrect data about the number of hospital beds in the country. According to real World Bank statistics, Russia had 8.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people in 2013, while the figure for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries was 3.8. However, the Bloomberg website said there were 3.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people in Russia and 8.2 in OECD in the reported period.
Bloomberg later edited the graphics attached to the article, but its Twitter posts featuring those charts remained the same.
On May 16, Bloomberg edited the headline of its May 13 article, after criticism from Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.