Who gets to own the Luigi Mangione story?
Who gets to own the Luigi Mangione story?
谁拥有路易吉·曼吉奥内（Luigi Mangione）故事的叙事权？
A handful of supporters showed up to a pretrial hearing with New York City-issued press passes. 一小群支持者佩戴着纽约市政府颁发的记者证，出现在了一场审前听证会上。
On Monday morning, a judge overseeing the New York state case on the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO ruled that some evidence collected by police could not be shown to a jury. 周一上午，负责审理联合健康集团（UnitedHealthcare）首席执行官遇害案的纽约州法官裁定，警方收集的部分证据不得向陪审团展示。
It wasn’t the only news coming out of the hearing. Outside the courthouse, Molly Crane-Newman, a New York Daily News reporter, captured on video several attendees giving incendiary remarks to the press. One of the attendees, Lena Weissbrot, said the children of Brian Thompson, who was shot and killed in December 2024, were “better off without him” and that they “needed to learn to not be like their dad.” Another attendee who identified themselves only as Ashley chimed in, “I’m standing on business. Fuck Brian Thompson. I don’t give a flying fuck he died.” They went on to discuss the US for-profit healthcare industry and people who have died without necessary medical care. 这并非听证会传出的唯一消息。在法院外，《纽约每日新闻》记者莫莉·克兰-纽曼（Molly Crane-Newman）拍摄到几名旁听者对媒体发表了煽动性言论。其中一名旁听者莉娜·韦斯布罗特（Lena Weissbrot）称，2024年12月遭枪杀的布莱恩·汤普森（Brian Thompson）的孩子们“没有他会过得更好”，并称他们“需要学会不要像他们的父亲”。另一名仅自称为阿什利（Ashley）的旁听者附和道：“我立场坚定。去他妈的布莱恩·汤普森。他死了我一点也不在乎。”随后，他们继续讨论了美国的营利性医疗行业以及那些因缺乏必要医疗救助而死亡的人们。
Ordinarily this would be a minor tabloid news item, along the lines of previous coverage of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering Thompson. I had seen — and interviewed — the attendees in question at previous hearings while covering the case. They, like other supporters of Mangione, have become regulars at the courthouse in lower Manhattan. But this time the comments spawned a different kind of news cycle: This handful of attendees had press credentials hanging from their necks. 通常情况下，这只会是一则小报新闻，类似于此前对谋杀汤普森的嫌疑人路易吉·曼吉奥内的报道。在报道此案的过往听证会时，我曾见过并采访过这些旁听者。像曼吉奥内的其他支持者一样，他们已成为曼哈顿下城法院的常客。但这一次，这些言论引发了不同寻常的舆论风波：这几名旁听者的脖子上挂着记者证。
Local reporters criticized the fact that the city had apparently doled out press passes to the three supporters, who run social media accounts under the moniker “The Mangionistas.” Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams described them as “reporters” and accused the current administration of being “reckless” in how they credential journalists. 当地记者批评称，市政府显然向这三名支持者发放了记者证，他们以“曼吉奥内主义者”（The Mangionistas）的名义运营社交媒体账号。前纽约市长埃里克·亚当斯（Eric Adams）称他们为“记者”，并指责现任政府在记者认证方面“鲁莽”。
The city-issued press passes require applicants to submit six examples of on-the-ground reporting, which can include traditional formats like a written story or a broadcast — but the application leaves room for more nontraditional formats as well. The city defines a member of the press as someone who “gathers and reports the news, by publishing, broadcasting, or cablecasting articles, commentaries, books, photographs, video, film, or audio by electronic, print, or digital media, such as radio, television, newspapers, magazines, wires, books, and the Internet.” What separates a reporter from a person who witnessed something and posted about it? Is a Substack essay on equal footing with a reported story? How do you demand that a reporter disentangle their personal opinions or feelings from the story they’re covering? (I’d argue this is nearly impossible.) It’s a definitional quagmire that could affect newsgathering beyond the Mangione case and shut out smaller outlets or independent journalists. 纽约市政府颁发的记者证要求申请人提交六份实地报道样本，形式可以是书面报道或广播等传统格式，但也为非传统格式留出了空间。市政府将新闻工作者定义为“通过电子、印刷或数字媒体（如广播、电视、报纸、杂志、通讯社、书籍和互联网）发布、广播或有线传播文章、评论、书籍、照片、视频、电影或音频来收集和报道新闻的人”。那么，记者与仅仅目击事件并发布相关内容的人有何区别？一篇Substack文章能与深度报道相提并论吗？你又该如何要求记者将个人观点或情感从报道中剥离出来？（我认为这几乎是不可能的。）这是一个定义上的泥潭，可能会影响曼吉奥内案之外的新闻采集，并将小型媒体或独立记者拒之门外。
At the same time, there are practical reasons the city might want to be more rigid in its credentialing. A press pass is required to cross police and fire lines and attend city-sponsored press events. Even before the Mangionistas, some local reporters have raised concerns about the city’s credentialing practices: A right-wing anti-vax local political candidate known as the “Sperminator” managed to get a press pass at some point during the Adams administration. The New York Post reported that the city blocked him from renewing his credentials in 2025 after he was accused of impersonating a reporter. If everyone can theoretically become “media,” credentialing becomes useless. 与此同时，市政府在认证方面采取更严格的态度也有现实原因。进入警察和消防封锁线以及参加市政府主办的新闻发布会都需要记者证。甚至在“曼吉奥内主义者”事件之前，一些当地记者就对市政府的认证做法表示担忧：一位被称为“精子终结者”（Sperminator）的右翼反疫苗当地政治候选人，曾在亚当斯执政期间获得过记者证。《纽约邮报》报道称，在被指控冒充记者后，市政府于2025年拒绝了他的证件续期申请。如果理论上每个人都能成为“媒体”，那么认证制度就失去了意义。
Who gets to decide what is and isn’t reporting? 谁有权决定什么是报道，什么不是？
By the end of the day, The New York Times reported that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration was reviewing the press credentialing process, and on Tuesday Mamdani said that the three Mangionistas should not have been issued press passes to begin with. (Reached via email, the Mangionistas declined to comment.) City Hall pointed The Verge to Mamdani’s comments earlier in the week, in which he said the three fans “don’t fall within [the] debate” of who should be able to get a press pass. Weissbrot appears to have started publishing dispatches from Mangione’s court hearings in September on a blog called The Bicoastal Beat, though there is no disclosure that she is directly involved in organizing for Mangione; a message to the author’s Bicoastal Beat email address was not returned. 当天晚些时候，《纽约时报》报道称，市长佐兰·曼达尼（Zohran Mamdani）的政府正在审查记者认证流程。周二，曼达尼表示，这三名“曼吉奥内主义者”本就不该获得记者证。（通过电子邮件联系时，这几名支持者拒绝置评。）市政府向《The Verge》指出了曼达尼本周早些时候的评论，他表示这三名粉丝“不属于”谁应该获得记者证的讨论范畴。韦斯布罗特似乎从9月开始就在一个名为“The Bicoastal Beat”的博客上发布曼吉奥内庭审的快讯，但她并未披露自己是否直接参与了曼吉奥内的组织活动；发往该作者Bicoastal Beat邮箱的消息未获回复。
“These individuals do not represent the views of Luigi, nor the tens of thousands who have shown their support from around the world,” Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mangione, said in an email. “The only people who speak for Luigi are his attorneys. We condemn these vile and irresponsible statements that have no place in the discourse around these cases.” “这些人既不代表路易吉的观点，也不代表全球成千上万支持者的观点，”曼吉奥内的律师凯伦·弗里德曼·阿格尼菲洛（Karen Friedman Agnifilo）在一封电子邮件中表示。“唯一能代表路易吉发言的人是他的律师。我们谴责这些卑劣且不负责任的言论，它们在围绕这些案件的讨论中毫无立足之地。”
The incident is weird on several levels. For one, it has become increasingly difficult to draw clean distinctions between a journalist, an influencer, a gadfly, a fan, and an activist. Who gets to decide what is and isn’t reporting, and who might be blocked from access if stricter rules are put in place? The situation also reveals the fault lines within the larger Luigi Mangione universe, and the messiness inherent in making a celebrity out of someone on trial for murder. 这一事件在多个层面上都显得十分怪异。首先，要在记者、网红、挑衅者、粉丝和活动家之间划清界限变得越来越困难。谁有权决定什么是报道，什么不是？如果实施更严格的规定，谁又会被拒之门外？这种情况也揭示了更广泛的“路易吉·曼吉奥内现象”内部的裂痕，以及将一名谋杀案被告捧为名人所固有的混乱。
This situation might be an edge case, but the questions it raises cut across wider changes in our information ecosystem and evolving media consumption habits. 这种情况可能是一个极端案例，但它所引发的问题触及了我们信息生态系统的广泛变革以及不断演变的媒体消费习惯。