Transparency watch: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio frequently closes events to the press

Obama and de Blasio
Birds of a feather…
Image via Reuters/Larry Downing

Via the Associated Press:

From the first moments of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, when he initially declared his midnight swearing-in off limits to the media, he has established a record of frequently conducting public business in private, with dozens of events closed to the press.

In nearly five months in office, de Blasio barred the media from 53 events and limited access to 30 more, an Associated Press analysis of de Blasio’s schedule shows. On a handful of days, his entire schedule was off limits. All told, more than 20 percent of his listed events were closed to the media.

Events in which reporters were notified of their existence but prevented from attending ranged from meetings with government figures such as the mayor of Seattle and Israel’s minister of foreign affairs to sit-downs with the NBA commissioner, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Russian band Pussy Riot.

Often, the mayor’s photographer later published images from those so-called private meetings, meaning that an official image of the event is the only one that exists.

It’s a tactic President Barack Obama has also used while restricting access to events in the White House and around the world. Several news organizations, including the AP, refuse to distribute such handout images from Obama or de Blasio.

De Blasio, a populist Democrat who campaigned with promises of an open administration, said in a news conference in Brooklyn on Tuesday that he “believes deeply in transparency” and that his administration could do better.

LOL. Something else he has in common with our celebrity President: Do as I say, but not as I do. Talk is cheap, Mayor. Β Too bad the political promises he makes to his big money donors and diehard liberal baseΒ are not.

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