CBS News Colorado: A spokesperson for Denver Mayor Mike Johnston admitted this week that the office has been operating an internal group on the encrypted messaging app Signal that was monitoring news stories and had been auto-deleting the group’s messages, apparently for more than a year. It’s a strategy some experts say violates the spirit of Colorado’s open records law.

The group, called “Media Monitoring,” would link to news stories, according to mayoral spokesperson Jordan Fuja, and share those stories with personnel in the Mayor’s office. But any comments or conversations about those stories were automatically deleted on the Signal app according to Fuja. She said the “media monitoring” Signal group started in the fall of 2023 and stopped auto-deleting its messages — in January 2025 — more than a year after the group chat began. Fuja was the administrator of the group but did not answer why the 17 member group was deleting its messages for more than a year, or why the practice was halted in January.

“This group chat is used to make sure the mayor’s office can keep track of the news in real time, which is a critical function of running the city,” said Fuja.

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