New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is using an army of influencers, bloggers and social media personalities, to advance his agenda.
These people are being paid with tax dollars and have exclusive access to his administration. They are fed talking points, which they then turn around and basically report as news.
People have begun to notice and this is starting to be covered as a scandal, because that’s exactly what it is.
FOX News reports:
Mamdani gives influencers special access as Signal use raises records-law questions
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is giving special access to a network of approximately 200 social media influencers who take City Hall talking points and videos to promote municipal programs online to residents, according to a new report.
The report, by the Columbia Journalism Review, highlights that the online personalities get their talking points through an encrypted Signal group text, called “NYC Creators Announcements.”
Signal offers a disappearing-messages feature that can automatically delete messages after a set period of time if enabled. It is unclear whether that feature is active in the Mamdani administration’s group, raising questions about compliance with city record-keeping laws.
Questioned by reporters whether the use of Signal possibly breaks city laws, Mamdani said, “My administration will always strive to fully comply with all legal requirements, including those that relate to the preservation of city records.”
The Columbia Journalism Review is hardly a conservative news outlet, yet even they are asking serious questions:
In many ways, the Signal group is similar to a traditional press list created and used by communications teams, in that the influencers receive updates and can decide what they choose to cover. There are, of course, clear differences between the work of journalists and social media influencers. These influencers have been criticized for not asking adversarial questions or doing tough investigative reporting. Influencers in the Signal group are not paid by the city for their coverage, although some are paid by city agencies for work on particular messaging campaigns…
Despite the fact that taxpayer money is being spent on campaigns involving influencers, information about these relationships is closely guarded. The procurement notices signed with the marketing and advertising agencies that handle the influencer contracts do not list the names of content creators, and officials in the mayor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for information. This lack of transparency comes up frequently in debates about the role of journalistic social media influencers.
New York City agency employees told us that the going pay rate is five thousand to twenty thousand dollars per influencer campaign. The fees are paid to influencers who are given contracts by marketing and advertising agencies that have contracts with the city.
This is pro-Mamdani, taxpayer-funded propaganda, plain and simple.
Expect to hear much more about this in the coming weeks as the story continues to unfold.
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