By: Gary Tilzer
The NY Times wrote a story that tried to blame the mayor who was elected last year to fight crime, for fighting crime, titled: “Eric Adams Can’t Stop Talking About Crime. There Are Risks to That.” The paper of record once prided itself on not mixing its editorial and news division. Now it uses reporters to warn its readers that there are risks to Adams talking about crime and going to crime scenes. The Old Gray Lady even spins by someone called anonymous “that the mayor is fear-mongering.” The paper ignores the opinion polls, low subway ridership, and non-return of workers to the midtown office buildings. New Yorkers’ fear of crime is ignored as The Times preaches its progressive doctrine. The paper of record is now asking the mayor to ignore the crime issue and its effects on the city, as they do.
The Times sermonized from its bubble on West 43rd Street that murders (down 8%) and shootings (down 10%) are down in NYC this year. Attacking ex-cop mayor, for saying he has never seen crime at this level. The paper of all the news that’s fit to print also ignored the city’s 37% increase in major crimes. Update: on Monday, The Times ignored that there were 12 New Yorkers shot and two stabbed the night before. They also ignored Beatriz Jimenez, 46, and her daughter, Jehieli Duran, tourists from San Antonio, Texas, when they were shot inside the bodega on the corner of Southern Boulevard and Jennings Street on Sunday night. A bloody Sunday night did not fit the paper’s progressive narrative, so they did not do a story. There were 22,835 felony assaults in NYC in 2021. The last time it was this high was 2001 (23,453). This year is on pace to be 27,333.
The Times does not care to understand that New Yorkers are not looking at numbers, they are looking at a government in Albany, judges, and prosecutors who are no longer doing the job of protecting them from crime. DA Bragg sent the Bodega store clerk, Jose Alba to Rikers on murder charges, for protecting himself against a man with 27 arrests attacking him behind the counter. The Times knows that New Yorkers moving out of the city fearing crime are also sick of the politicians who protect the guilty. When New Yorkers learned about the Bodega worker being sent to jail for defending himself, they became afraid they could end up in the situation Alba faced. The Times tried to spin that both men were victims before the videotape came out “Adams Shows Support for Man Charged in Bodega Killing That Caused Outcry, A deadly confrontation at a Harlem store feeds a broader debate about crime and politics.”
We can see The Times is trying to intimidate the mayor to stop talking about the city’s crime wave. It is interesting that The Times thinks the bail issue is politics, does that mean that attacks on New Yorkers are also politics?
What does politics have to do with city residents fearing a bail law that allows a career criminal indicted on a murder charge for beating to death 67-year-old Ramon Luna, after being freed without bail by a Manhattan judge? What does politics have to do with the growing Asian community looking at a mentally ill homeless man who has been in and out of jail before he pushed Michelle Go to her death on a Times Square platform, fearing that the same fate awaits them? What does politics have to do with the Jewish community’s fears that they are not safe in their own community after Yosef Hershkop, was mugged during the day in Crown Heights in front of his five-year-old son?
Reza Chowdhury Twitter @RezaC1: Once again, every single precinct in Manhattan is reporting an increase in major crime YTD YOY in this week’s installment of the @ManhattanDA @MarkLevineNYC crime report: In exchange for 6 fewer murders, there’s been +38 rapes, +605 robberies, and +240 felony assaults.
Even The Times admits buried in the same story that a series of violent episodes have contributed to the feeling that the city is not safe. “A woman was fatally shot on the Upper East Side while pushing her infant daughter in a stroller; an 11-year-old girl was killed in the Bronx when she was caught in the crossfire of teenagers. A Goldman Sachs employee died in an unprovoked shooting on the subway and a mass shooting on the subway injured at least 23 people in Brooklyn.
The New NY Times Slogan Should Be: All the Narrative News That Attracts Left-Wing Subscribers
The Times no longer pays its bills by selling papers in the city or by writing editorials on NYC issues. The paper keeps the lights on, and bills paid by pushing a progressive narrative that attracts paid subscribers all over the nation. The Times accuses Mayor Adams of fear-mongering as the cause of why New Yorkers feel the city is unsafe, as red meat to their left-wing subscribers. The two people quoted in their article attacking Adams’ policies are Camille Rivera, a Democratic strategist whose consulting company works to elect Democratic Socialists of America to defund the police elected officials like Councilwoman Sandy Nurse and Congressman Jamaal Bowman. The other person quoted Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a political consultant who was formerly a deputy press secretary to Mr. de Blasio, accusing the new mayor of inciting a panic that is unnecessary.” Why does The Times feel the opinions of political consultants, paid spin doctors, matter more on a crime story than the average New Yorker?
The Partnership’s Wylde Can Save NYC if She Pushes The Times to Listen to Her Members
The Times reporter Emma G. Fitzsimmons accused Adams of hurting workers’ return to city offices, the return of the tourists, and making more difficult the city’s economic recovery, by the mayor’s depictions of NYC as a lawless city where criminals and guns roam unchecked. After blaming the mayor for overstating the effects of crime, The Times reporter asked the head of the Partnership for her comments on the mayor’s leadership. “The mayor’s messaging reflects what most New Yorkers feel, which is that we’re worried about safety, but we have ultimate confidence that our city will bounce back,” she said. Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City,
It is curious why Wylde did not say to the Times what her members said to her, and what she said to the Times after the murder in May of Park Slope’s Daniel Enriquez, a Goldman Sachs employee, who was fatally shot in the chest on the Q train recently. At that time, Wylde told The Times that her members “we’re hearing from their employees that crime is the obstacle in terms of returning to their city offices – returning to the subways.” Concern about public safety, especially in the city’s transit system, was the single largest issue workers cited as an obstacle to returning to the office, according to a poll conducted in March by Morning Consult on behalf of the Partnership for New York City. The death of Mr. Enriquez was the most recent of several high-profile violent incidents on the subway this year.
Wylde should have told the Times that the mayor has no messaging problem as the Times alleges, that the paper has a listening problem to listen to the average New Yorkers, Partnership members, and the mayor on the damage out-of-control crime is doing to NYC. Does The Times believe that distorting reality is not caused by a lack of journalistic integrity? If the Partnership put pressure on The Times to objectively cover what most New Yorkers blame as the reasons for the increase in crime, it would have a game-changing effect on NY crime fighting and politics. Even though The Times is no longer read by city residents, it still influences the rest of NYC’s media, which write news stories they cover and copy the way they cover them. It is not only The Times that is at fault here, Wylde’s Partnership members have become transactional in their campaign donations to pick the winner, not paying any attention to who they are helping to win.
The Partnership would be a lot better off if they provided some leadership in repairing NY’s broken election system and media. Instead of begging DA Bragg to follow the law, they should be using their resources to find out how Bragg was elected with 18% of the Manhattan registered voters. To empower common sense New Yorkers the Partnership should be pushing for open elections, run-off and recall elections, for all elective offices. Wylde should also ask the Times and her other friends in the media why they did not properly cover the Republican District Attorney candidate Thomas Kenniff, who was trying to warn the voters of Manhattan about what Bragg would do as DA. In their only story covering Bragg’s opponent, the paper quoted a campaign flack that stated, “Mr. Kenniff had spent the campaign “making ridiculous attacks playing on people’s fears.”
Jennifer Harrison who founded Victims Rights NY said about the 2021 DA Bragg elections:
“Just as the biased media covered up the disaster, we all knew Bail Reform would become they covered up Bragg’s ideology and how dangerous and deadly the consequences were of him becoming the Manhattan DA. Thomas Kenniff the Republican candidate for DA against Bragg was afforded no coverage as he pointed out time and time again exactly what would happen if he did not win this election. He was right. But nobody could listen because not one media outlet covered his campaign.”
Thomas A. Kenniff Republican Candidate for Manhattan DA in 2021, Says the Media Blocked His Efforts to Warn the Voters About Bragg’s Radical Views of Criminal Justice:
“Overall, the press coverage of the District Attorney’s race and my candidacy, varied between condescension and outright indifference. Whatever anyone thought of my chances, it was an important race, at a time when the city was experiencing an increase in crime not seen in decades, and the dichotomy between the two candidates could not have been greater. For the media to ignore the race the way they did, was to abdicate their position as Vital stewards of the Democratic process.”
Even NY Post conservative reporter Michael Goodwin ignored the city’s elected officials when they blasted DA Bragg on the Hamilton Heights Bodega’s store workers’ arrest. Goodwin wrote: “Where are members of the Legislature and Where Is City Council? By my count, exactly zero politicians have come to Alba’s defense.” Goodwin should have been aware of a letter signed by seven Council members: Bob Holden, Kalman Yeger, Joe Borelli, Joann Ariola, Inna Vernikov, Vickie Paladino, and David Carr, demanding the DA Bragg drop the charges against the Bodega worker. There was no coverage of a City Hall rally held last week attended by some of the letter signers to also demand that the charges against Alba be dropped. It looks like the NY media has a problem covering those opposing prosecutors when they are Republican or labeled conserved, who happen to agree with 75% of New Yorkers according to the latest polls.
The City Council Members Were for School Budget Cuts Before They Were Against Them
The modest cut — 0.69% of the Department of Education’s (DOE) $31 billion-plus budget — is the result of 1) the winding down of $7 billion in temporary federal COVID relief, 2) falling student enrollment and 3) the need to rein in years of off-the-charts spending (with no improvement in citywide student achievement). Total enrollment at NYC schools not including charter schools was 919,136 this school year. That’s down 3.8% from the 2020-2021 school year. They also released 2023 projections, -3.7% or another 30K. 150,000 families have left the public school system in recent years, yet the school budget has increased by billions. United Federation of Teachers puppets on the City Council have joined in demanding Adams “immediately restore” some $215 million.
One would think the DOE has enough money when stories come out that the Schools chancellor is among 55 staffers attending a conference at a 4-star Florida hotel amid budget turmoil. Next year’s budget when federal stimulus money runs out and the city’s tax collections begin to shrink because of Wall Street and other business losses, inflation and a recession will begin to affect the city’s budget, and the school will have to be cut like in the 1970s. The period from Jan. 1 to June 30 marked the worst first half-year in more than 50 years. With returns on the pension funds way down, the city will have to kick in more from its operating budget to cover benefits for current and future retired workers — $4 billion more than planned from next year through 2026. The UFT will not be able to rescind next year’s budget cuts, the only thing they will be able to do is print money on the presses in Randi’s basement.