I haven't done any kind of systematic survey, but most of the coverage (particularly broadcast coverage) I've seen about the conflict between New York mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD (or portions thereof) has been maddeningly he said/she said, just noting quickly that the two sides are angry with each other without bothering to detail exactly what their complaints are. In doing so, they let people like Patrick Lynch, the head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, fling unsubstantiated or just absurd charges without any accountability. For instance, yesterday afternoon Lynch was interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR's All Things Considered, and while it might be going a bit far to call it a softball interview (there was at least one probing question), Siegel didn't ask Lynch what ought to have been the most obvious question in an interview about this controversy: What, specifically, has Mayor de Blasio done that you object to? That's really the heart of the issue, but if you don't ever ask, your audience doesn't get the information it needs to understand the controversy.
Regular readers will know that this is a particular media hobbyhorse of mine (see here, here, or here). "What, specifically, are you talking about?" is a simple, incredibly revealing question that political figures almost never get asked. When somebody makes a shocking or sweeping claim-as when Lynch said after the murder of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu that de Blasio and others had "blood on [their] hands"-and then you have an opportunity to interview them, good journalism demands holding them accountable for their claims. Seigel not only failed to do that in this case, he asked Lynch this incredible question: "How far would an apology from the mayor go with you?"
What made that question all the more head-spinning was that Siegel didn't specify what de Blasio is supposed to apologize for. As far as I can tell, what has New York police angry is that 1) in the wake of Eric Garner's death via an illegal chokehold from an NYPD officer, de Blasio said "the way we do policing needs to change" in order to improve relations between the police and the people they're supposed to be serving; and 2) he explained how he and his wife told their son, "Look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do. Don't move suddenly. Don't reach for your cellphone. Because we knew, sadly, there's a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color." Despite the fact that millions of African-American parents have this same conversation with their sons, the head of another police union said the idea that a young black man might want to take extra care when dealing with police was "moronic" and that de Blasio "may want to think about moving out of New York City completely. He just doesn't belong here."
And then there's the fact that de Blasio said of the officers who decided to stage protests at Liu's and Ramos' funerals, "They were disrespectful to the families." Which is pretty close to inarguable. Police officers have a right to protest the mayor if they choose, but doing it at a funeral is so utterly classless that the only other people who ever even contemplate such a thing are the members of Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church, who are universally reviled not only for their message of hate, but for the fact that they choose to spread it at funerals in the faces of grieving families.
So that's the bill of particulars against de Blasio (and I realize that members of the NYPD have older complaints about him, like the fact that he ended the "stop and frisk" policy, but that's not what they're saying they're angry about now). He has made some utterly commonsensical observations, which people like Pat Lynch interpret as "attacks" on the NYPD, while all the while being careful to praise the police whenever he talks about the topic. On the other side, leaders and members of the NYPD have accused de Blasio of bearing direct and personal responsibility for the murder of two police officers, protested him at funerals, and circulated notices encouraging officers to publicly state that if they are killed in the line of duty then the mayor should be barred from their funerals. But de Blasio is supposed to apologize, for something or other.
I know this may be fruitless, but here's a suggestion for any other reporter who gets the opportunity to interview Pat Lynch: Just ask him what specifically he's angry at Bill de Blasio for. When he says that de Blasio "attacks the New York City Police Department," as he did in the NPR interview, ask him what statement, specifically, he's referring to. And if he says that de Blasio has created some kind of a terrible "climate" for police officers, as he has charged, ask him how, specifically, de Blasio has done that.
Of course, the same standard should be applied to de Blasio or any other public figure. "What, specifically, are you talking about?" is a simple question. I still don't understand why reporters almost never ask it.
UPDATE: In Thursday's New York Times, there's an op-ed from a former NYPD officer named Steve Osborne, under the title, "Why we're so mad at de Blasio." Here, I thought, we'd finally get the details on all the cruel things the mayor has done to New York police. But while the op-ed talks a lot about how difficult and stressful it is to be a cop, this is the entirety of Osborne's indictment of de Blasio:
Mr. de Blasio is more than any other public figure in this city responsible for feelings of demoralization among the police. It did not help to tell the world about instructing his son, Dante, who is biracial, to be wary of the police, or to publicly signal support of anti-police protesters (for instance, by standing alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton, a staunch backer of the protests).
And that's it. How have NYPD cops have been able to endure such an unrelenting assault from the mayor? While de Blasio praises the NYPD as a whole regularly, Osborne only acknowledges that he did so once, and says it "came too late." So there you have it.
