Chicago Mayor Defends Her Decision On Only Allowing Minority Media to Interview Her

Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, is said to have defended her contentious decision only to allow minority media to interview her, calling the amount of non-white journalists covering her “unacceptable,” according to Fox News.

Lightfoot told The New York Times’ “Sway” host Kara Swisher on Monday, “I would absolutely do it again. I’m unapologetic about it because it spurred a very important conversation, a conversation that needed to happen, that should have happened a long time ago.”

In May, as she celebrated her second anniversary in office, the Democrat slammed the “overwhelming whiteness” of the Chicago media and announced that she would only give one-on-one interviews to minorities.

“Here is the bottom line for me, to state the obvious, I’m a black woman mayor. I’m the mayor of the third-largest city in the country; obviously, I have a platform, and it’s important to me to advocate on things that I believe are important,” Lightfoot told Swisher. “Going back to why I ran, to disrupt the status quo. The media is critically important to our democracy … the media is in a time of incredible upheaval and disruption, but our City hall press corps looks like it’s 1950 or 1970.”

Lightfoot told the media outlets to be “focused on diversity.”

“In Chicago, we have a huge amount of diverse media talent. We’ve got schools that are of journalism that are best in class across the country, and I would say, really, across the world,” she said. “So the absence of journalists of color, covering the mayor of the third-largest city in a country is absolutely unacceptable. And so I decided to say something about it.”

She did, however, point out that politicians should not be able to choose who covers them.

“I just taught at the University of Chicago. You have amazing diverse journalists studying there that I taught. And I agree with the need for more diversity in media. But politicians don’t get to choose who covers them,” Swisher said. “No, it’s not about me choosing who covers me, right? I gave exclusive interviews. And we do get to choose who we talk to in exclusives. I gave exclusive interviews with journalists of color, right?” she said.

“One 24-hour period, and it was like people’s heads exploded. I had journalists saying, ‘Does the mayor think I’m racist?’ No, it’s not about individuals. It’s about systemic racism,” the mayor added.

Lightfoot said she would “absolutely do it again” when asked if her decision worked.

She said, “I’m unapologetic about it because it spurred a very important conversation, a conversation that needed to happen, that should have happened a long time ago.”