Mayor Eric Adams accuses media of being "intentionally destructive" to Black men at National Urban League Conference in Houston
HOUSTON -- Mayor Eric Adams offered a stinging rebuke of the media while speaking at a National Urban League Conference in Houston.
Adams said Black people in many professions are covered differently and that reporting is sometimes "intentionally destructive."
Adams, speaking on a panel with other Black mayors of big cities, said the media pressures Black men to keep their opinions and passions to themselves so they won't be thought of as an "angry Black man."
"We are so afraid of getting the title that could destroy our lives. If you get the title of angry Black man, you will not raise up in corporate society, you will not raise up in Hollywood, you will not raise up on a sports team, you will not raise up on politics," said Adams.
Other mayors on the panel lamented the media in their cities often fail to give them credit for their successes.
"There's a difference between critiquing and doing a proper analysis of what you have done and being intentionally destructive," said Adams, who admitted some criticism comes with the job.
CBS New York's Marcia Kramer asked David Paterson, who ascended to governor of New York after Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, if he felt a special sting from the press because of his race.
"A lot of times, the media has made Black men look remissive. In other words, not serious," said Paterson. "It's just something that I think doesn't just happen to Black men, but it happens to Hispanic men and it happens to women of all ethnicities."
"Did you ever feel pressure not to get angry at these stories that were demeaning to you?" Kramer asked.
"Yes. I did not react to these stories because I knew it was just going to lead to more stories. And with me, it wasn't just the fact that I was a Black man. The harshest treatment I thought came from the fact that I'm blind," said Paterson.
Adams, since he is a mayor of "swagger," made it clear that he's going to do his own press. "Eric Adams Unfiltered," so to speak. He just started his own radio show and he's making regular community appearances.
