Mayor Mamdani tapped former Metropolis Councilman Rafael Espinal to guide his media workplace on Monday — and made it certainly one of Espinal’s first orders of enterprise to revoke ex-Mayor Eric Adams’ eleventh hour effort to position new restrictions on press entry within the Massive Apple.
The brand new guidelines, which Adams’ Workplace of Media and Leisure rolled out on his closing day in workplace, would’ve put tighter restrictions on who can receive New York Metropolis press playing cards, together with by requiring candidates be employed by a “media platform” or a member of a journalism affiliation. The brand new guidelines floated by Adams additionally would’ve expanded the standards for denying, suspending and revoking the playing cards, which journalists use to achieve entry to press conferences, crime scenes and different occasions and incidents.
After formally appointing Espinal as his commissioner of the mayor’s workplace of media and leisure, Mamdani mentioned at a morning press convention in Brooklyn that he’s directing him to rescind Adams’ last-minute press card reforms, calling them “an attack on the press.”
“We will be withdrawing those proposed rules, and much of the reason for that is that we view a number of these proposals as being an attack on the press, the free press,” he mentioned, standing alongside Espinal. “There’s no need for us to be advancing that same vision.”
Particularly, Mamdani mentioned he sees Adams’ proposed guidelines as an try and “restrict the press’ ability to engage with the mayor’s office.”
Gardiner Anderson / New York Day by day Information
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, middle, and Metropolis Council Speaker Julie Menin, proper, announce the appointment of Rafael Espinal, left, as commissioner of the Mayor’s Workplace Of Media and Leisure on Monday. (Gardiner Anderson / New York Day by day Information)
After working a social media-savvy marketing campaign, Mamdani has signaled he hopes to broaden the tent of media in a position to cowl him.
Final week, he invited a big group of influencers and social media content material producers to ask him questions at his first press briefing within the Metropolis Corridor Blue Room, an occasion from which his crew excluded journalists working for extra mainstream shops. Influencers and content material producers, in addition to some freelance reporters, possible might’ve had a tougher time securing New York Metropolis press playing cards had Adams’ guidelines been adopted.
Apart from overseeing the processing of press playing cards, the Mayor’s Workplace of Media and Leisure is tasked with coordinating metropolis authorities help for native movie and tv manufacturing. The workplace additionally approves permits for movie shoots within the metropolis.
Espinal, who has been working because the president of the Freelancers Union since leaving the Metropolis Council in 2020, mentioned he sees his job as a chance to facilitate extra movie and media manufacturing within the metropolis.
“Because if we have more production, we have more access to jobs and when people have more jobs, the city becomes more affordable to them,” he mentioned.
