'AN ATTACK ON THE PRESS': NYC MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI SAYS NO TO ADAMS' ATTEMPT TO CENSOR NEWS
NEW MAYOR PUMPS BRAKES ON PROPOSED CHANGES TO LAW THAT WOULD HAVE MADE CENSORSHIP OFFICIAL POLICY, FORMER MAYOR ERIC ADAMS OFFERED NEW RULES IN FINAL HOURS
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announces the appointment of Rafael Espinal as Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME). Jan. 12, 2026. Photo credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.
MALONE, NEW YORK Jan. 12, 2025
New York City's new mayor Zohran K. Mamdani is withdrawing proposed changes to the law governing city-issued press credentials that would have made censorship official policy.
"We will be withdrawing those proposed rules," Mayor Mamdani said at a Monday afternoon news conference announcing his appointment of Rafael Espinal as Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, or MOME.
The Free Lance News first reported the proposed changes Jan. 3 and called out the new mayor for failing to disavow them on Saturday.
As detailed in our first report, the changes were proposed by former mayor Eric Adams in the final hours of his administration. Generally stated, Adams's proposals would have made city-issued press credentials harder for journalists to get and easier for the city to take away.
Because official press credentials allow journalists to cross police lines and access government buildings like City Hall, they are a necessary piece of equipment for any real reporter or news photographer in New York City.
Chief among the problematic new rules proposed by Adams was one that would have allowed the City to revoke a journalist's press credential if something they did placed “a person in reasonable fear of physical injury."
The Free Lance News dubbed it, the “snowflake rule.”
We explained this proposed addition was not necessary because rules already in place allow the City to revoke the press credentials of journalists who commit crimes on the job. What the new rules in effect sought to do was expand the scope of punishable conduct beyond crimes as a means of intimidating and silently censoring the press.
First Amendment lawyers call this “chilling effect.”
All it would have taken, under the proposed rules, for the City to take a journalist’s credential would be for one person to say that reporter or news photographer made them feel "unsafe."
On Monday, Mayor Mamdani called the proposed new rules "an attack on the press, the free press."
Explaining his decision to quash them, Mayor Mamdani said "There's no need for us to be advancing that same vision."
When, in response to The Free Lance's reporting, the mayor's team was "going through a number of the different specific proposals we just see time and again that the intent is not to strengthen whether the public's access of information or way in which we work with the press corp."
Instead, Mayor Mamdani explained, "It more felt as if it was intent to tighten and restrict the press's ability to engage with the mayor's office and that is not something that we want to put forward."
Todd Maisel, Chairman of the Government Relations committee of the New York Press Photographers Association, called the rules proposed by former mayor Eric Adams "outrageous." He said the group was "gratified" Adams's "war on the media has ended with the rescinding of the proposed MOME rules."
"A simple door knock for a quote could result in a complaint under the rules that MOME had suggested," Maisel explains, "and the complainant would not be subject to legal ramifications should the complaint be false."
The proposed rules were still posted on MOME's website Monday evening.
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