Ray Dalio: WSJ 'Distorted' News Is A Major Problem

Americans became all-too-familiar with fake political news stories on Facebook Inc FB during the election season, but Bridgewater Associates chief investment officer Ray Dalio claims that a much more prominent news organization is deliberately distorting the news.

In a new post on LinkedIn, Dalio accuses The Wall Street Journal of presenting an unfair and biased story on Bridgewater.

“To me, fake and distorted media are essentially the same problem in different degrees,” Dalio wrote.

He says Rob Copeland and Bradley Hope came to Bridgewater to fact-check information for a story that Bridgewater found had many inaccuracies. Copeland insisted that he simply wanted to get the facts about Bridgewater’s work environment directly from the company itself.

Despite an agreement that Copeland would only use the information in the story if Bridgewater agreed its presentation was accurate, Dalio claims the authors presented a distorted representation of Bridgewater’s information and then ignored written objections by the company.

According to Dalio, Copeland and Hope make sweeping judgments about the work environment at Bridgewater after interviewing more than a dozen disgruntled present and former employees. Dalio says the majority of employees are extremely happy at Bridgewater, but the journalists put little effort into presenting a balanced story.

“In each case, I explained to them that they were mischaracterizing and they chose not to convey anything that didn’t fit with the story they wanted to write,” Dalio concluded.

He ended the story with a word of caution to the American public.

“I suggest that rather than worry about what’s true about Bridgewater, which probably won’t have an effect on your life, you worry instead about the systemic risks arising from fake and distorted media.”

Dow Jones' Steve Severinghaus gave this statement to Benzinga:

"The Wall Street Journal stands by its strong reporting about Bridgewater Associates. We have reviewed the efforts undertaken for this article and are confident that the same high journalistic standards that have served the publication and its readers well for more than 125 years were fully applied in this instance."