At first the post was typical Bralley fare, a very detailed account of a friend of his Benson Hendrix, who is a PR guy for UNM's communication and marketing department. What has been troubling us came later in the post when Mayor Chavez denied Mr. Bralley access to the bus being used as part of UNM and the City of Albuquerque's dog and pony show (a.k.a. news conference) du jour.
I can’t show you what happened, because after answering questions from a KUNM FM reporter, Chávez passed close by me speaking softly to his police bodyguard, Officer Louie Sanchez. “This guy’s problems…,” Chávez said. He then continued whispering to Sanchez, telling him to keep me from boarding the bus.Mr. Bralley is a retired cop and a photo journalist who seems to take his new found career very seriously. We know that he provides photos for Joe Monahan and other clients, presumably for a fee. He certainly has attended more city council meetings than anyone except perhaps Geraldine Amato; including city councilors. In short, even though he's associated with and participates in the new media of the blogosphere it'd be hard to deny that he's a member of the media.
“The mayor says you took a swing at him at an earlier event,” Sanchez, below right, said. “He is afraid of you.” Sanchez asked me, as a personal favor to him, that I not get on the bus. My response to Sanchez was that I was being a journalist and following the story.
What has been bothering us is that we might be partially responsible for the mayor's ridiculous claim that he's afraid of Mr. Bralley. There have been rumors that Mark Bralley is really The Eye. In fact, we posted a denial some time ago on his blog after some brouhaha or the other where he was directly accused of being the author of Eye On Albuquerque. After we made the denial on his blog, he asked us via email to make a similar statement right here in Eye Land.
At the time, we felt that we didn't want to spend time making denial after denial and who other people including Sheriff, blogger and Lt. Gubernatorial candidate Greg Solano thought we were or are didn't matter at all. What we're concerned about is the unintended consequences of our failure to make a public denial regarding Mr. Bralley. So to that end, we're going to help the 5th and 11th floors out and give them the name of one person who we are definitely not. We are not and have never been Mark Bralley.
(Sidebar)Now that that's out of the way... let's get back to the other problem, the Almighty Marty himself. Marty thrives on almost daily news conferences and pesters the media relentlessly to get them to put his smiling face on TV or in the paper saying "good for me Albuquerque," or some other non-sense. The only time you won't find Marty at a city newser is if the subject matter might make him look bad; like when the topic is well... immigration.
It will be very interesting to see if Sheriff Solano continues to blog during his campaign for Lt. Governor. Blogs are great for expressing opinions and while opinions can garner support they can also create enemies who will use his posts against him.
(End Sidebar)
Marty and his minions spend an inordinate amount of time trying to manipulate and control the media. The almost daily waste of media time is designed for one thing and one thing only - to make the Almighty Mayor look good.
Generally speaking the media is annoyed by it, but because he's the mayor they feel almost compelled to send a reporter or at least a photographer to cover the "event." Such is the power of a powerful elected official over the mainstream media.
The plain truth is that Marty LOVES these things and does everything he can to create favorable media "events" in order to feed his ego and his political future. Banning a recognized member of the media from an event that is open to the media and is self-serving to boot, is nothing short of colossally arrogant, not to mention obnoxious.
