Emboldened by her certain re-election, Mayor Michelle Wu is today taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook, attacking the media for not fully backing her assertion that Boston is the safest major city in the country.
The heavy-handed Wu, who won 72% of the vote in this month’s preliminary election, forcing her only opponent to drop out, apparently wants more.
Wu is today moving to buff up her image by having total control of what the media writes about Boston.
Wu, who has received almost universal positive coverage in most publications, web sites, and radio and TV stations in Massachusetts, complained falsely that the media hasn’t written a “single piece” on the city’s low homicide rate.
She made the accusation on one of her many media safe spaces, a fawning radio talk show she gets to appear on every month. She also expanded on her beef with the media in a speech to a business group where most of the major executives are Wu supporters because they don’t want to cross her and face retribution.
In taking aim at the media, Wu included the friendly Boston Globe, owned by the Red Sox’s John Henry, who has a major development project in the Fenway area.
“Especially if you may not live and breathe Boston every day, sometimes what you read in the Globe or other outlets picks at different things that are happening,” she said.
By that, Wu apparently means she does not want the media reporting on any crimes, like the shootings, stabbings, robberies and attacks that occur in Boston almost every day.
Like the stabbing in East Boston yesterday, or the naked man armed with a large knife who came out of a Beacon Hill restaurant. Or the rampant crime and drug use in the South End around Mass and Cass.
“We want to get better every single day, but last year Boston had the safest year ever on record. The number of homicides that the city recorded was far and away the lowest of any major city nationally, and the lowest that we had seen since we started recording data 70 years ago,” she said.
“Throughout that entire time, the Boston Globe didn’t even write a single piece, and to this day, still hasn’t really delved into how that happened,” the first term mayor added.
It’s ironic that Wu is turning to President Trump’s strategy for attacking the media, since she is one of Trump’s number one enemies. But if it works, why not?
“Boston’s homicide rate was by far the lowest in absolute numbers and per capita by residents, and certainly the lowest in our city’s history,” she said. “Certain members of our lovely, accountable, local press corps reminded me that if you cut it a certain way, Mesa, Arizona had a slightly lower rate than we did. I’m sorry, Mesa, but if you don’t have all sports teams, you’re not a real city, okay?”
Wu apparently does not count San Diego as a major city, because they don’t have a football, hockey or basketball team. That allows her to dismiss San Diego’s homicide rate, which is lower than Boston’s. Same with Fort Worth, Texas and Las Vegas, which also have lower violent crime rates than Boston but don’t count as “major” cities under Wu’s convenient sports formula.
Wu’s charge about the media was not a mistake or a random comment – it had a definite purpose. She wants the story of Boston told her way.
She knows that her strategy could have a chilling effect, forcing the media to comply with her request or face repercussions, like slowing down Henry’s development projects.
It’s already working, since the Globe was forced to put links in its story to show that it’s been towing her line, all the pieces that have been written about Boston’s low homicide rate.
But maybe it would just be better for Wu if her press office controls the narrative about Boston from today on.
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