Latest news with #ChrisSommerfeldt
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
NY Daily News calls Adams' ban of City Hall reporter unconstitutional, demands reversal
NEW YORK — New York Daily News management is demanding that Mayor Eric Adams reverse his stated ban on the paper's senior City Hall reporter from mayoral press conferences, calling the move a violation of the Daily News' constitutional rights. An attorney for the paper made the demand in a letter sent to the city's Law Department Friday. 'Banning (senior City Hall reporter Chris) Sommerfeldt from attending the Mayor's press conferences is plainly unconstitutional,' attorney Matthew Leish wrote, citing both First and 14th amendment issues. Leish asked the Adams administration to drop the ban by noon on Monday at the latest, and did not rule out further legal action. '(T)he Daily News and Mr. Sommerfeldt expressly reserve all of their rights and remedies,' he wrote. As previously reported by the Daily News, Adams banned Sommerfeldt from future press conferences Tuesday after the reporter asked a question without raising his hand. Sommerfeldt has not been called on by the mayor's press staff in more than three months. The reporter had just asked a follow-up to another journalist's question when Adams said: 'You're calling out a lot, Chris, stop calling out!' the mayor said in a sing-song tone. 'You must have done that in school.' 'Listen, if he does that again, he's not to come into our conferences,' Adams then said to his press staff. Sommerfeldt then asked the mayor, 'You want to take a question from me, then?' 'He did it again,' Adams replied. 'Make sure security knows he's not allowed back into this room.' In his letter Friday, Leish, the Daily News' attorney, said the purported ban 'unquestionably violates the First Amendment,' which prohibits selective regulation of the press. 'The Mayor's press conferences are generally open to any credentialed journalist, and the purported reason for Mr. Sommerfeldt's exclusion – the fact that he asked questions without being called on – is completely arbitrary given that other journalists have done exactly the same thing without incident,' Leish wrote. The attorney said the ban also violated Sommerfeldt's 14th Amendment right to due process to address the proposed ban. Asked during a round table on the upcoming mayoral primary on WPIX Thursday about his plans, Sommerfeldt said he was going to continue 'doing my job.' Adams, asked if he planned to enforce the ban during a News 12 interview, said he expected there would be conversations between his team and Daily News management and that 'we'll decide what we're going to do from there.' City hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The letter comes amid a groundswell of opposition to the ban. The New York Press Club, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and PEN America have all called on Adams to drop the ban, as has the Daily News Union. Republican mayoral hopeful Curtis Sliwa and Democratic candidate Zellnor Myrie also criticized Adams for the ban. _____
New York Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Adams Bars Reporter From News Conferences for Being ‘Disrespectful'
Chris Sommerfeldt, who covers City Hall for The New York Daily News, spent the early part of Tuesday reporting on ICE agents' arrest of Brad Lander, the city comptroller, at a Manhattan courthouse. Later in the day, Mr. Sommerfeldt was a subject of news coverage himself, after Mayor Eric Adams took the extraordinary step of barring him in the future from the weekly City Hall news conferences that are reporters' only regular chance to ask Mr. Adams whatever they want. The mayor, whose interactions with reporters have often been contentious, imposed the ban after calling Mr. Sommerfeldt 'disruptive' and 'disrespectful' for shouting questions without being called on first, as is the custom at the so-called off-topic events. Mr. Sommerfeldt, one of two Daily News reporters who cover City Hall, has not been called on at one of the weekly events in more than three months, the newspaper reported. The exchange that preceded the mayor's unusual move came as he discussed his plans for the general election campaign. Elected as a Democrat in 2021, Mr. Adams is skipping the party primary this year and has said he intends to run for re-election on two ballot lines of his own creation: EndAntiSemitism and Safe&Affordable. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
