Over the past several days, Michael Bloomberg announced certain meaningful things.
On May 28, it was that the city had received an additional $32 million from the federal government for job training. Later that day, it was that the state had picked up on the city's call for tighter gun control laws. On June 1, it was an endorsement from Representative Gary Ackerman, a Democrat.
But the press wasn’t listening.
Instead of receiving the news that the mayor intended for them to receive, members of the news-consuming public were treated to story after story about the mayor’s relationship with the press, the mayor’s controlling attitude, the mayor’s emotional stability.
(The New York Times’ lead after the mayor announced the stimulus money: “He is the undisputed front-runner in November’s election. He is the richest man in the city. So why does Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg keep losing his temper?”)
The flash point for the press’ collective decision to depart sharply from City Hall’s regularly scheduled programming was a pointlessly hostile bit of dialogue that took place on May 28 in Queens. The mayor had said that there were indications that the local economy might be turning a corner. I began to ask whether that didn’t conflict with his stated rationale for overturning term limits, which was based on the notion that the city needed his steady hand to guide it through an extraordinary downturn. The mayor dismissed the question as irrelevant and, as he left the podium, said I was a “disgrace” for asking it.
The cameras were still rolling.
This might not have been a big deal if the press weren’t already seething about the mayor’s extraordinary unwillingness to answer questions he deemed political. Or if his brusque response hadn’t played so precisely to type. Or if his record-setting campaign spending hadn’t effectively ended the mayor’s race before it began, leaving reporters without any substantive debate to cover.
But, as it turned out, it was kind of a big deal.
That afternoon, The Times ran a transcript of the exchange. NY1 began airing its own video, as did the local Fox affiliate. The Daily News and Newsday and the AP ran stories. The Awl posted a video of the exchange I shot and wrote something funny about it. Politico picked up the story. Then Drudge and the Huffington Post.
Seen-it-all Newsday reporter Dan Janison wrote a blistering condemnation of the mayor. New York TV eminence Gabe Pressman wrote that Mr. Bloomberg needed “a good therapist.”
Toward the end of the day, a Bloomberg spokesman called to inform me that I had been apologized to, then called and emailed other political reporters to notify them that the apology had been conveyed.
But “disgrace,” apparently, had legs. It was aired on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and on Hardball With Chris Matthews and on Countdown With Keith Olbermann, who named Mr. Bloomberg as one of the “Worst Persons in the World.” (The same Keith Olbermann, it should be said, who once bestowed a similar honor on an Observer reporter.)
On May 30, the New York Post ran an AP news analysis headlined “Testy Mike’s Questionable Behavior,” which outlined repeated instances in which reporters tried to ask Mr. Bloomberg questions only to be yelled at, insulted or simply dismissed.
The first press conference Mr. Bloomberg held after “disgrace” was on June 1, in his midtown campaign office. He was there to announce the Ackerman endorsement, but he also used the occasion to unveil an unusual new questions policy: He would “generally” take questions he thinks are related to his campaign at officially sanctioned campaign events, but at events at which he’s acting in his official capacity as mayor, he would not.
A reporter asked the mayor if he regretted “disgrace.”
“We’re beyond that,” the mayor replied.
But apparently, he still wasn’t.
The next day, at a press conference in Lower Manhattan on June 2 about cutting health care benefits to stave off layoffs for at least 90 days, Mr. Bloomberg asked if there were any off-topic questions.
A correspondent for Thomson Reuters promptly asked the following one: “Do you think it’s disgraceful for reporters in an open society to ask questions of people in power about their actions and motives?”
“I think we’re beyond that,” Mr. Bloomberg said again, this time with less conviction. “Let’s get on to the next thing.”
That day, the Daily News had carried a story in its print edition criticizing Mr. Bloomberg for saying at a press conference the day before that President Obama “doesn’t get paid that much” and that he’s “on a budget.” (Headline on the original web version: “Get a clue, Bloomy! Mayor touts Obama’s ‘affordable’ night on Broadway.”)
The mayor’s comments were delivered as part of a defense of the Obamas against Republican criticism that their display of merrymaking during a recent visit to New York had shown insensitivity to Americans suffering from the recession.
The “affordable” remark was an attempt at humor, probably. But the media that Mr. Bloomberg so clearly detests, apparently, has stopped seeing the joke.
A Bloomberg campaign aide sent me an instant message once that story appeared, and asked, “am i wrong, or is this a strange take for a NYC newspaper to take?”
At the moment? Not really.
