The only thing embarrassing about this to the authorities is their reaction.
It ought to be apparent to anyone that providing perfect security is impossible, and that pretending we can is akin to a child sticking fingers in their ears and shouting "la-la-la". I think it's already clear that if we catch you doing terrorism you'll never see the light of day again, so "trying to send a strong message" about pranks like this just makes us look weak and vulnerable.
Can you elaborate on the police reaction? Here are some quotes by the NYPD:
"""
“It appears to have no particular connections to terrorism or even to politics,” Miller said. “This may be somebody’s art project or even a statement.”
But police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the matter was serious nonetheless.
“Needless to say, no matter what the motive was, that is a matter of concern,” Bratton said. “I am not particularly happy about the event, and have charged Commissioner Miller to conduct a full and thorough investigation into the circumstances.”
Miller emphasized that the white flag placement was not funny, and was not acceptable.
“We don’t take these things lightly, or as a joke, or as art, or within the realm of speech,” Miller said. “These are issues of trespass. They put themselves in danger. They put others in danger.”
"""
These don't seem like unreasonable statements. It may seem interesting in the abstract, but I personally don't care for any random persons crawling all over the Brooklyn Bridge consequence-free.
The New York Post is owned by News Corporation. And like all their other publications their modus operandi is propaganda and FUD. That is how they became hugely successful so there is no reason for them to change.
As for whether the press is allowed to do it well that's more tied to the US constitution and it's belief in free speech. Most countries have a more sensible version of this.
First, you shouldn't be getting downvoted. This is a legitimate question in my opinion.
In America, there's generally an attitude of caveat emptor for non-essential things, news publications included.* I live in New York City, and I think most people understand NYDN falls more on the entertainment side of the spectrum, and read it for entertainment rather than to be informed.
*Meaning we generally are happy to have things like food and drinking water and transportation regulated, but not so much things like movies or video games or books.
Think about this for a second. You can literally go "crawling all over the Brooklyn Bridge consequence free" anytime you like. It's a bridge you can walk on. You can even drive your car on it. In both cases you're far more likely to be a threat there than on the top of the bridge.
The immediate reaction was that this might be terror related - "NYPD bomb technicians spent several hours checking the bridge for explosives but found none."
They even subpoenaed a parody Twitter account for claiming it "signal[ed] our complete surrender of the Brooklyn Bridge bicycle path to pedestrians"
The reflex of treating this intervention as some kind of security threat is embarrassing. I read an article at the time musing that the white flags meant something about surrender. Like a child in a cave scaring himself by whispering "boo".
The installation, by the way, reminded me of Richard Ankrom's guerrilla modification of a well-known freeway sign near downtown LA (http://www.ankrom.org/freeway_signs.html).
The artist had a sign fabricated to Caltrans specs, got a haircut and a hard hat, and did the install in broad daylight (on a weekend). It was up for over 8 years -- Caltrans noticed it after a couple of months.
Eventually it was replaced by a similar design by actual Caltrans workers.
I was going to say the same thing, and this quote from one of them made me laugh: "We really didn’t intend to embarrass the police."
The police did it to themselves. If they had blown it off as a waste of time and resources to investigate some prank, then they could've saved face and preserved the myth of the current "security theatre".
Critical infrastructure was breached and the authorities' response was to go on a manhunt for people who were by that point obviously not a threat. All the resources that went into it had to be diverted away from other activities that might have had an actual positive impact on public safety.
If the authorities had simply launched an investigation into how the breach was made so that they could take steps to make our infrastructure more secure in the future, that would have been an appropriate and reasonable response. This wild flailing about, though -- all it does is demonstrate once again that the people in charge of our national security are incompetents who rely on security theater to maintain the illusion that they deserve to keep their jobs.
Perpetuating the illusion that there are innumerable grave threats that require resource-intensive responses is a useful tool for ensuring that more anti-terrorism money from the federal government gets poured into the city. It's not all incompetence.
It ought to be apparent to anyone that providing perfect security is impossible, and that pretending we can is akin to a child sticking fingers in their ears and shouting "la-la-la". I think it's already clear that if we catch you doing terrorism you'll never see the light of day again, so "trying to send a strong message" about pranks like this just makes us look weak and vulnerable.