Howard Wolfson photo: Newsbusters.org
As we have observed before, the Daily News is playing a crucial public relations role for the mayor during the charter revision process. Today, the News is doing damage control, trying to convince readers that Mike Bloomberg isn’t going to pull the charter revision commission’s strings, despite what his chief political strategist said Tuesday. Read today’s DN story by Adam Lisberg and see if you agree.
The headline, “Charter chairman to commissioners: Ignore City Hall and do what’s right,” says it all: Commission chairman Matthew Goldstein will protect the group from mayoral control. Next comes a memo Goldstein sent yesterday to his colleagues “as a reply to Mayor Bloomberg’s deputy Howard Wolfson,” who undermined the commission’s hope that the public would view it as independent when he “said Tuesday night on NY1 that the commission probably wouldn’t recommend eliminating borough presidents or the public advocate, but ‘certainly we will have the term limits issue on the ballot.'”
To underline that independence, the story quotes an unnamed “angry commissioner” speaking of Wolfson:
“He’s a f— a— to get on TV and say that while we’re at a hearing. As a commissioner, I couldn’t believe he did that. … [The memo] reinforces the fact that this is a very independent commission, a very, very independent chairman, who will not take any crap from City Hall. Matt [Gordon, charter commission press officer] was very unhappy.”
Just in case the News hasn’t convinced us yet, the next sentence tells us “That should help address any lingering questions about whether Goldstein, the chancellor of City University, is independent enough of Bloomberg.”
We rest our case. It may be worth noting that the Daily News is published by “real estate billionaire” Mort Zuckerman.
CityPragmatist 