New York City Mayor Eric Adams suggested on Tuesday at a press conference that media coverage of him is being distorted because he is Black.
Adams, who met with state lawmakers in Albany earlier in the day, asserted that his story is being interpreted by "people who don't look like me."
"We got to be honest about that," he said. ''How many Blacks are in the editorial boards? How many Blacks determine how these stories are being written? How many Asians? How many East Indians? How many South Asians? Everyone talks about my government being diversified. What's the diversification in the newsrooms?"
"My role as mayor is being interpreted through the prisms of your realities and not mine. So, when you write stories, you're not writing stories for people who were almost homeless like me," Adams continued. "You're not writing stories for people who were arrested and beat up by police officers. You're not writing stories for those who are dealing with high crime. You're writing them from your prisms."
Adams proceeded to call on the owners of media companies to "diversify" their newsrooms.
"Diversify your newsrooms so I can look out and see people that look like me and say we are going to write stories based on the prisms that we have," Adams said. "That's not what we're getting, and that's why I'm covered the way I'm covered. And I'm not comfortable with it."
The mayor, a retired New York Police Department captain, had just finished talking with state lawmakers about the state's most recent bail reform law, which limits the setting of cash bail. The press asked Adams about the meeting amid reports that it did not go well for him.
"There was no arguing, no yelling, no screaming," Adams said. "Areas we disagreed on, we talked about it, and we walked through them."
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