City Hall argued that Rosen, one of his longest-serving and – at the time – closest political advisers, was tantamount to a municipal employee and his emails with the mayor were therefore protected from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Law.
He was thrilled with a story that appeared in Newsday about his comments on what the 2016 election year would mean for the national liberal movement, and recommended his press staff contact the reporter who wrote it.
A trove of email correspondence between Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration and the consulting firm BerlinRosen released Thursday reveals the mayor’s disgust with the city’s press corps.
The emails show an angry and petulant mayor reacting to criticism of him dating back to his first year in office. Aides are shown attempting to devise strategies that would allow the administration to get its message out without relying on reporters. The mayor’s wife, Chirlane McCray, proposed that “we create our own click-bait. Our own topical, lively, unconventional, sometimes fun, sometimes controversial content.”
The mayor’s testy relationship with the press has been well-documented. But the 4,251 pages of emails show the depth of the animus for specific news outlets, including The New York Times, and suggest an administration that felt itself under siege by what it perceived as hostile news coverage.
The mayor, his senior advisers and McCray disparage articles that criticize him and, at one point, suggest a “prolonged paid media campaign” instead of relying on “earned media” to write about the controversial issue of police reform.
De Blasio was particularly angry with criticism of his late-morning gym visit during a police standoff with a shooter on Staten Island in 2015. He fired off an email to aides beginning with, “the news media is pitiful and it’s sad for our city and nation.”
“We can make a conscience [sic] decision to surrender to them and just go to fires, crime scenes and memorials all day every day – or we can govern,” he continued on Aug. 14, 2015, before laying out suggestions to alter his strategy. He concluded by vowing, “They will never defeat us. Only we can do that. Let’s get tighter, clearer, faster, better.”
In that email chain, de Blasio said he was warned that several union leaders might attack him over the incident and told his staff, “I need a scorecard tmrw re: who was a friend and who was cheap.”
“Ironically, the firefighters and officers I encountered were overwhelmingly warm and appreciative, including the members of Engine 158 who I spoke with at the hospital. I know this too shall pass, but let’s deal with these bastards,” he wrote.
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch, assuming the line was an attack on him, issued a statement Thursday evening referring to “Mayor de Blasio’s thin-skinned arrogance.” Eric Phillips, de Blasio’s spokesman, said he wasn’t referring to Lynch or police officers, for whom he has “the utmost respect.”
Respect was not a word the mayor used for The New York Times.
“What did I say about how disappointing the nyt has become.?” de Blasio wrote to a group of City Hall staffers on Sept. 16, 2015, in response to an article about his plan to turn around underperforming schools.
The piece discussed the high cost and political risk of the plan, and noted Republican opposition in Albany.
Karen Hinton, de Blasio’s former press secretary, responded that the reporter had another “very good” story in the paper and may have “felt the need to criticize to balance it out.”
“I think this is disgusting,” the mayor wrote back. “She provides no balance whatsoever on the overall plan. Yes, the computer science story was good, but this story is about much more and is extremely biased. We need to figure out a new paradigm with the Times. This level of bias can’t be ignored. Either starve them or reason with them or something else – but this is ridiculous.”
He derided another Times story about his shifting political strategies as “idiotic.” The piece, he said, served as “a staggering reminder of the sad state of media that this is how they choose to use space that could be better spent covering real problems for nyers.”
Those exchanges would ordinarily be exempt from public disclosure, but de Blasio included Jonathan Rosen, a principal at BerlinRosen, in his salty replies to the group.
City Hall argued that Rosen, one of his longest-serving and – at the time – closest political advisers, was tantamount to a municipal employee and his emails with the mayor were therefore protected from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Law.
The mayor’s team extended that designation to four other outside advisers it classified as “agents of the city,” their staff and anyone who worked on his now-defunct political fundraising operation, Campaign for One New York.
News outlets NY1 and the New York Post won a lawsuit earlier this month forcing City Hall to release the emails.
The lawsuit, which Phillips said cost the city “more than zero and less than [a] minimal [amount],” resulted in Thursday’s release of previously redacted and withheld emails. The city is expected to continue turning over correspondence between the mayor and other outside advisers, which POLITICO first sought through a freedom of information request in July 2014.
After a summer during which crises seemed to pile up – from his feud with Gov. Andrew Cuomo to his unsuccessful effort to regulate for-hire vehicles – de Blasio had a rare mea culpa moment.
“Our problem is that as a team we have all (led by me) absolutely sucked at
laying down the predicate on this issue,” he wrote about his administration’s handling of the city’s homelessness crisis, which he later described as his biggest regret.
But he also began making plans with his team to curtail the media’s access to him and find new avenues and reporters who might offer more favorable coverage.
After The Atlantic’s Molly Ball published a profile of him in mid-November 2015, de Blasio vowed to stop cooperating with reporters writing profiles.
“Now I HAVE read this and it’s horrible. I strongly advise we avoid profiles from now on, especially from national publications. . We gave her a shitload of time!” he wrote. “Really shocking how bad and unfair it is. I have no use for these people. Let’s just do the work and go right around the so-called referees.”
Shot through the correspondence is de Blasio’s particular anger with The New York Times.
“It just dawned on me how totally fucked up it is that the Times has turned down the only 2 op-eds I’ve offered in 16 months, both on very weighty topics,” he wrote to advisers in April 2015, as he recommended setting up a meeting with the paper’s editorial leadership.
He also set about trying to cultivate some specific reporters.
In May, 2015, he informed his top advisers he was “open to taking the challenge and starting to woo certain media, at least on an experimental basis. Let’s start with alex burns,” he said, referring to a New York Times political reporter.
He was thrilled with a story that appeared in Newsday about his comments on what the 2016 election year would mean for the national liberal movement, and recommended his press staff contact the reporter who wrote it. “Ok, well at least ONE reporter understands what I’m talking about! :), ” he wrote.
In October 2015, de Blasio was particularly pleased with an interview on MNSBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think we’ve gone from a troubled situation last year with MoJo to a better one,” de Blasio emailed his staff. “We should determine how best to use them in our line-up of options.” He has since become a semi-regular guest on the show and declared Sept. 19, 2017, to be “Morning Joe Day.”
The mayor’s disdain for the reporters who cover him reached a fever pitch when he came under scrutiny amid federal and state investigations into his campaign fundraising efforts. In October 2016, he called the New York Post a “right wing rag” and refused to answer questions from the paper’s reporters.
Eight months later, he delivered a sustained diatribe against the media in a one-on-one interview with the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed.
The emails include frenetic exchanges among de Blasio’s staff, Rosen and the mayor’s campaign and government attorneys about how to respond to requests about the mayor’s fundraising, in light of the federal investigation. Prosecutors did not end up bringing charges but chided the mayor’s practice of doing favors for donors.
And the thousands of pages of correspondence, in addition to thousands already provided by City Hall, provide further evidence of the inextricable relationship between Rosen and the administration.
Rosen has advised the mayor since he served on the City Council 10 years ago, helped him win the 2013 mayoralty and was paid to work on his outside fundraising entity Campaign for One New York, which was at the center of the probes.
He often suggested people for jobs and board appointments, some of whom were chosen, weighed in on policy talks and helped edit speeches.
The mayor repeatedly turned to him for advice on everything from press management to political strategy, while BerlinRosen worked on behalf of real estate and labor clients with city business. The relationship was so familiar that de Blasio often had his scheduler ask if the mayor could hold important meetings or conduct fundraising calls at BerlinRosen’s Lower Manhattan offices.
In discussing the future of the New York Daily News amid rumors of it being sold in 2015, Rosen wrote, “Some rumor that his [plan] is to cut back on the print paper and make it a web play. The Hill now only comes out in print three days a week on session days. Rest online.”
“And that would be good for us, right? Or would that make the Post more dominant?” the mayor replied. “Or, conversely, would it hasten the demise of the Post – prob just wishful thinking.”
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