Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office on Monday said that it would review the process for approving press credentials following inflammatory comments that some of Luigi Mangione’s supporters made outside the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building.
The statement from the mayor’s office came after Mr. Mangione appeared briefly in court on Monday, and more than a dozen of his supporters, some with press credentials, attended. One of them, Lena Weissbrot, stood in front of cameras outside the courthouse after the hearing with a badge around her neck that read “PRESS.”
In her comments, she said the children of Brian Thompson, the health care executive whom Mr. Mangione is accused of killing, were better off without their father.
A reporter from The Daily News, Molly Crane-Newman, posted videos of the comments on social media, drawing outrage and in a few cases, support.
Mr. Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan in 2024. He was left bleeding on the sidewalk, a trail of shell casings next to him, in a brazen killing that shocked many Americans.
But some people have since argued that the shooting was a justifiable outgrowth of Americans’ frustration with the health care system.
Ms. Weissbrot’s comments on Monday were a preview of sentiments that may become more common as Mr. Mangione’s state trial, scheduled for September, brings the views of his most fervent supporters into the public eye. And they raised questions about who is able to receive press passes under New York City’s current media credentialing system.
Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for Mayor Mamdani, said that the administration was “reassessing the city’s process and standards for press credentialing.”
Until 2021, the Police Department issued press credentials to reporters in the city. But in 2022, a new law went into effect, moving the credentialing powers to the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.
To receive a press card, applicants must submit six or more “articles, commentaries, books, photographs, videos, films, or audios published, broadcast, or cablecast” within the 24 months before the application, according to the city agency. A member of the press can mean someone employed by a traditional news-gathering organization or a “self-employed newsperson.”
Once a person is credentialed, revoking their access is not simple — the policy says that no agency, including the Police Department, can seize or revoke a valid press card until an administrative hearing is held before the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
In an interview later on Monday, Ms. Weissbrot defended her statements.
“I know it’s a little inflammatory, but the American people are really mad about the health insurance industry,” she said.
A lawyer for Mr. Mangione, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, said in a statement that the comments from his supporters “do not represent the views of Luigi, nor the tens of thousands who have shown their support from around the world.”
“The only people who speak for Luigi are his attorneys,” she said. “We condemn these vile and irresponsible statements.”
By Ms. Weissbrot’s side on Monday was Abril Rios, another of Mr. Mangione’s supporters who appeared to be one of the first to receive an official press credential from New York City. Over the past year, Ms. Rios has emerged as one of the leaders of the self-styled “Mangionistas.” The group has an Instagram account with slightly more than 300 followers.
Ms. Weissbrot said she submitted six of her personal notes that she took from hearings she covered to the city. She said the writing she submitted did not include opinions: “They were pretty much observations.”
Norman Siegel, the former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union who is now a civil liberties lawyer in private practice, filed a lawsuit in 2008 on behalf of three online journalists to broaden who can be considered credentialed press in New York City.
“I thought at the time that the process was elitist, exclusionary,” he said.
But if it is creating a systemic problem, it might be time to rethink the guidelines, he said.
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Benjamin Weiser and Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
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