Daily News Says Adams Move to Bar City Hall Reporter from Briefings is ‘Unconstitutional’

In a testy exchange at Mayor Eric Adams’s weekly off-topic press briefing on June 17, Hizzoner said he was banning Daily News reporter Chris Sommerfeldt from future press briefings because the reporter was shouting questions out of turn.

The Daily News Union, which is part of the NewsGuild of New York, demanded that Adams “revoke this ban immediately.”

Daily News management called the ban “unconstitutional.”

”Banning [senior City Hall reporter Chris] Sommerfeldt from attending the mayor’s press conferences is plainly unconstitutional,” News attorney Matthew Leish wrote in a letter sent to the city’s law department. He said it violates the First and 14th amendments and called on Adams to reverse the policy immediately.

Adams normally limits each reporter to two questions at most per press conference. Sommerfeldt told Straus News Adams and his aides “haven’t called on me for two or three months.”

On June 17, he had asked called-out questions that Adams ignored. Later in the presser when he tried to shout an additional question, Adams objected, saying the City Hall reporter was “calling out a lot. You must have done that in school. Stop calling out,” Adams chastised.

Adams then turned toward his aides and said of Sommerfeldt, “If he does that again, he’s not to come into our [press] conferences.” Then turning back to the reporter he further admonished, “You’re not going to come into my off-topic and be disrespectful.”

Sommerfeldt again tried to ask Adams a question about his line on the ballot in the upcoming general election where Adams, who is skipping the Democratic primary, is seeking to run on two independent lines. Sommerfeldt tried to ask, if Adams could pick only one of the indie lines, which one would it be since the Board of Elections is attempting to limit Adams to one independent line only.

Adams then snapped, “He did it again. Make sure security knows he’s not allowed back into this room.”

”Chris was doing his job,” the Daily News Union said in a statement released shortly after the clash. It said Adams had admonished the reporter in a “singsong manner.”

“The only person being disrespectful was you,” the union said.

It then criticized the mayor’s once-a-week press briefings. “Unlike previous mayoral administrations, you have instructed your press staff to only allow off-topic questions at one event per week.”

Adams does hold other press briefings, but the press are always told only the on-topic questions will be answered in those sessions.

”To ban a reporter from future press conferences for doing the very thing a press conference is designed to facilitate—asking a question—shows a flagrant disregard for the role of the press and for our colleagues’ professionalism.

”We demand that you revoke the ban immediately,” the union said.

”No mayoral administration should ban reporters for any reason,” said Tom Allon, publisher of City & State, who had served as an unofficial aide to Adams after he won the election in 2021 and prior to his swearing-in. At the time, Allon had advised the mayor-elect to avoid the problems that Bill de Blasio encountered by feuding with the press. But Allon noted in a recent prodcast that Adams and his deputy mayor and director of communications, Fabien Levy, did not heed the advice.

”This is part of a recurring problem the last three years and it has to stop,” said Allon.

”Our reporters have the right to ask questions, and taxpayers aren’t funding the police to keep reporters out of City Hall press conferences,” said Andrew Julien, the executive editor of the Daily News.