NYC pols move to revamp press credentials after outrage over passes for Luigi Mangione fangirls

City Council leaders are moving to revamp the press credentialing process for Big Apple journalists – after a gaggle of Luigi Mangione superfans were granted official passes earlier this year. Council Speaker Julie Menin and Deputy Leader Chris Banks will introduce an amendment Thursday to the current credentialing process, which would make it easier for the city to revoke passes.– making it easier for city officials to revoke the coveted passes by lowering the current burden of proof required. “For this system to work as intended, there must be a thoughtful process for issuing credentials and, when necessary, revoking them,” said Menin in a statement. “We’re committed to ensuring a process that balances real logistical, safety, and journalistic concerns,” she said.“Our only goal here is to help journalists do their critical work, in good times and bad.”Credentials allow journalists to enter areas restricted to the public, like emergency scenes, press pens and certain courtrooms – but the review process has been under scrutiny since the program was moved from the NYPD’s purview to the Mayor’s Office of Entertainment and Media in 2021. Controversy that the review process was too lax came to a head in May when a trio of “Mangionistas” spouted vile hate and calls for violence outside a Manhattan court hearing for the accused killer — and it was revealed they’d been granted press passes to cover the case.One of the Mangione fans, Lena Weissbrot, even shockingly said that the children of UnitedHealthare CEO Brian Thompson — whom Mangione has since admitted to shooting dead on a Midtown street — were “better off without him.”Weissbrot and her comrades, Abril Rios and Ashley Rojas, were issued the passes earlier in the year through Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, under the credentialing process launched by his predecessor Eric Adams.Mamdani said at the time that City Hall would initiate it’s own review process around ...