Mayor Blames NYC Press Corps’ Inaccurate, Negative Reporting on Lack of Diversity in Newsrooms

By Yehudit Garmaise

After several media outlets reported Mayor Eric Adams as giving up on pressing for bail reform with legislators in Albany yesterday, the mayor blamed New York City’s press corps for not being racially diverse enough to understand the cooperative and peaceful meetings that actually took place.

“My role as mayor is being interpreted through the prisms of your realities, and not mine,” the mayor told NYC’s press corps today at a press conference at City Hall. “When you write stories, you are not writing stories for people who were almost homeless like me. You are not writing stories for who were arrested and beaten by police officers or people who are dealing with high crime.

“My administration is going to be about saying the obvious that others are uncomfortable about saying. Discomfort is growth.”

Mayor Adams’ frustration was likely in response to a NY Daily News Headline that read, “Eric Beat Up in Crime Fight,” which the mayor said, “did not happen” and later called “really unfortunate” reporting. 

“One person said, ‘Eric got beat up,’ and that became the news,” the mayor said with frustration, as he called out the press corps. “If you set the tone that we are in chaos, then people are going to believe that. That [reporting should have never happened, yesterday. We need to stop distorting the news.”

What did happen, the mayor reported, was that he “sat down [NY Senate Majority Leader] Andrea [Stewart-Cousins (D)] and [NY Speaker of the NY Assembly] Carl [Heastie],” and they laughed, talked about old times, and about how they “were working together to keep our city and our state safe,” however Adams lamented that their productive, friendly meetings were not covered at all.

“I am a black man, but my story has been interpreted by people who don't look like me," said Mayor Adams. “How many blacks are on the editorial boards? How many blacks, Asians, East Indians, and South Asians determine how these stories are being written? 

“I say to all of the owners of the city’s papers: ‘Diversify your newsrooms,’ so I can look out [at press conferences] and see people who look like me, and say, ‘We are going to write stories based on the prism of this young [black] man," who stood nearby.

"Be bold, be unafraid, and be true,” Mayor Adams said to the young man. “Most importantly: be you. Because no matter what you are, if you are a mailroom attendant, a messenger or the mayor: they are just not going to get us. They are never going to get us.

"So, we have to get ourselves.”

Photo by: Flickr