By Kate Taylor | Originally Published at The New York Times. March 6, 2014

Battered in the press over his position on charter schools, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday took to a friendly news outlet to defend himself and argue that his actions were being distorted.

In a 12-minute interview on the hip-hop radio station Hot 97, Mr. de Blasio responded to criticism of his decisions to charge some charter schools rent, and most recently, to block three charter schools from moving into space at public school buildings. This expansion had previously been approved by the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

“Of course we’re going to work with the charter schools, and there’s a lot of very good charter schools, but we’re going to treat them with an equality as — the same way we treat traditional public schools,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We’re not going to favor them the way the Bloomberg administration did.”

The Hot 97 hosts, Peter Rosenberg and Ebro Darden, were sympathetic interlocutors, suggesting that there was a coordinated campaign by charter schools’ rich backers to distort Mr. de Blasio’s positions in the press.

“Now let me jump in here because the audience may not know,” Mr. Darden said. “A lot of them are funded by big business. Is that true or not?”

“Oh, yeah, a lot of them are funded by very wealthy Wall Street folks and others,” Mr. de Blasio responded.

Mr. Darden then suggested that these wealthy people — who, Mr. Rosenberg added, are “already upset that you’re in office and not their guy, Bloomberg” — were funding a campaign to paint Mr. de Blasio as anti-charter schools.

“I think you’re providing a keen political analysis here,” Mr. de Blasio said.

The debate intensified this week when an advocacy group, Families for Excellent Schools, organized a rally in Albany to protest the mayor’s policies on charter schools, which include a moratorium on new charter schools moving into public school buildings. The group also recently started a multimillion-dollar television ad campaign praising charter schools and urging the mayor not to hinder them.

“We’re proud of our grass-roots focus as a parent-steered coalition,” Jeremiah Kittredge, executive director of Families for Excellent Schools, said in a statement.

The rally featured many black and Latino families, and some parents were quoted criticizing Mr. de Blasio and even saying that they regretted voting for him. In a deft political move, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appeared at the charter school rally and gave a rousing speech, stepping on coverage of Mr. de Blasio’s appearance at his own, smaller rally in favor of his prekindergarten expansion a short distance away.

On Thursday, Mr. Darden and Mr. Rosenberg complained about the press coverage of the issue and the competing rallies, saying that the comparisons of the two rallies made it seem as if the charter school rally was “the Super Bowl” and Mr. de Blasio’s rally was “a pizza party.”

“The big business marketing campaign would have us believe that black children are now being kicked out of charter schools, and being mistreated because of de Blasio,” Mr. Darden said, telling his listeners, “Don’t believe the hype.”

Mr. de Blasio agreed that his policies were being misrepresented.

“We have to fix the root causes here, and so that’s what our policy is about,” he said. “And so anyone who tries to obscure this discussion and say, oh, we’re taking it out on one kid or — no, we’re trying to reach out to every child and every family and fix the school system as a whole.”