25 April 2021: Cuomo's Attempted "Illusion of Openness"

Fade to Gray: The fourth estate

During a slow news weekend in Cuomoland, John Gray's weekly column in the Troy Record gets to the heart of what's wrong with Governor Cuomo's cowardly media tactics. In the passage below, he describes what has changed since Cuomo's administration became consumed by its many scandals:

With so many scandals and investigations happening all at once, the governor has deliberately kept journalists from being in the same room with him. His people blame it on Covid, but the infection numbers were far worse last spring and summer when reporters were allowed to sit only twenty feet away. The difference is, back then, he was getting glowing press and reviews on his daily briefings, so the media was his friend.

Now, the questions are more hostile and sometimes impossible to answer without a lawyer, so he shows great disrespect for journalists by denying them access.

What’s worse, his office presents these press briefings as if they are legitimate opportunities to cover the news and ask a question. They are not. There is something called the L.C.A., made up of reporters who do nothing but cover politics at the state capital. These journalists are smart, know their stuff and ask tough questions. Because the governor won’t let them be in the same room with him anymore, they can’t ask legitimate questions.

There is an illusion of openness presented, because the governor’s people set up a phone line where reporters can call in. The problem is, the governor’s people control who gets to ask a question and the reporters from the L.C.A. are never called on, at least not since more than a half-dozen women accused the governor of inappropriate behavior.

Gray indicates he hasn't paid much attention to Cuomo's staged public events because they don't present much in the way of new information and because the media has largely been shut out from them. Gray then describes the governor's 23 April 2021 staged public event, when just one reporter broke loose from following Team Cuomo's carefully controlled script:

... I decided to give another press briefing a try and when it came time for reporter’s questions there was obviously a screw-up. By that I mean, a journalist I had never heard of was called on and he asked a direct question to Andrew Cuomo- if you are found guilty of violating state law on sexual harassment will you resign?

Cuomo called the legal investigations a “review” five times in his response but refused to answer the question as it was posed. The reporter asked again, same answer. When the reporter tried to nail the governor down a third time, he was hung up on by the governor’s handlers.

Gray then gets to the main point of his column:

This, what you are seeing now, is no longer journalism. For the media to keep covering events the governor does as if they are important news is silly. It is clear the strategy from his office is to find events that make it look like everything is normal on Eagle Street in Albany and then shut down any ability for journalists to do their jobs.

Put simply, he wants to eat the cake without the consequences of the calories.

The only way any of this is going to change, is if the Times, Post, this newspaper and all the rest across the state, inform the governor’s office that they are free to do whatever events they want and send out a press release after but beyond that, we won’t be dedicating a reporter to cover any of it.

If the press is not fully and truly welcome, they should stop being used as pawns in this silly game.

They are investigations, not reviews. The allegations of hiding death numbers, sexual misconduct and mis-using state employees are all serious business. I don’t know if our governor is guilty of any of it or none of it. He may well be the most innocent man since Andy Dufresne left Shawshank. But, for now, the press should stop dancing to the governor’s tune.

They are being used and worse, they know it.

Indeed, they are. What will they do about it?