But not in the same way as Donald
HE HATES US, he really hates us!
Mayor de Blasio doubled down on his diatribes against the media Friday — from the broadsheets to the tabloids — a day after City Hall released more than 4,000 pages of emails that featured him railing against the press.
But that doesn’t mean he’s anything like President Trump, he insisted — because his vitriol for the press comes from a different political direction.
“I have a progressive, left-wing critique of the media. I’ve had it my whole life. I think it’s a corporate media that in too many ways is not telling the larger truth of our society,” de Blasio lectured during a rare visit to City Hall’s Room 9, where the press corps works, to take questions Friday.
“Donald Trump has a right wing antimedia attitude that’s trying to unfortunately reinforce a lot of the powerful’s rights and prerogatives in this country,” he continued. “They’re totally different things.”
The emails, between de Blasio and top outside advisers who work for the political consulting firm BerlinRosen, were released Thursday after the city spent about two years trying to keep them secret. City Hall argued the consultants served as “agents of the city” — and should get the same exemption from the Freedom of Information Law as city employees do in communicating with him.
Those same outside consultants represent clients with business before the city — and in 2016, NY1 sued to get access to what the consultants discussed with the mayor. De Blasio only relented Thursday, years after the suit was filed and after repeated losses in court.
In the emails, Hizzoner called the media “pitiful” and said that was “sad for our city and nation” in one of the emails. In another, he speculated about potential cutbacks at the Daily News and wrote: “And that would be good for us, right?”
Despite explicitly writing it would be good for “us,” de Blasio insisted that wasn’t the real question when asked if he still felt News cutbacks would be good for him.
“It’s not for me, that’s not the question,” he said, insisting the media should be held accountable just as elected officials are. “My view is the tabloid culture has been bad for New York City for a long, long time. I said earlier it created Donald Trump, guarantee a lot of people will commend that statement and confirm that statement, and it has to change.”
He insisted papers like The News — which has exposed poor conditions in public housing, homeless shelters, and other ways government lets down city’s broadsheet, either — saying regular people — weren’t focused on “there’s obviously an elite orientation” the people of color who now make at The New York Times. up most of the city’s population. He is fond of the “subscription
“It’s not the city from the ’70s and type of model” at the Guardian, a paper ’80s,” he said. “The tabloid culture is in the United Kingdom, he said, lost in that time.” as well as nonprofit media. Asked at
In his emails about The News facing the City Hall gaggle if he’d prefer cuts, he also speculated on state media, he didn’t say no. whether that might fuel the demise “I think there’s a lot of good history, of its rival, the New York Post. He for example, (in) Western Europe of was less diplomatic when asked on having different state entities with WNYC, earlier in the day, about The different viewpoints that give another Post closing. perspective — but not a single
“No, I will not shed a tear if that state-run entity that provides a government newspaper is no longer here, because line on things. That's not I think we need a better civic healthy at all,” he said. discourse,” he said of the paper, On Twitter, his spokesman Eric which, like The News, employs hundreds Phillips downplayed the importance of people. of the emails: “The scandals:
The mayor isn’t crazy about the he thinks the media’s unfair; he can be tough on staff; he strategizes; he disagrees w/the governor. City Hall is doing quite alright. Moving on…”
But that raises the question of why, exactly, de Blasio spent two years and had at least a half-dozen city lawyers fighting their release. The city said it couldn’t say how much the legal battle cost. Phillips maintained it was “more than zero and less than minimal.”
De Blasio insisted it was not an effort to shield his own sometimes unflattering notes from the public.
“Tell me if there is anyone in this room who has not criticized a colleague,
NEWS SAYS:
or raised a controversial issue that comes with tough things you need to think about and you need to talk out loud about,” de Blasio said. “We were told that was part of the governing process, turned out that advice was wrong, we won’t make that mistake again.”
If his advisers had asked an expert on the Freedom of Information Law, they might have known their rationale wouldn’t hold up.
“You could be my good friend … and you could know a lot about something, but if I call you and ask you for advice, that doesn’t make you a consultant retained by the government, nor does it make you a quote agent of the city,” Robert Freeman, executive director of the Committee on Open Government, said.