Lori Lightfoot Defends Only Accepting Interviews From ‘Black and Brown’ Journalists

MacLean Center via (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en) Flickr

Lori Lightfoot defends giving interviews to exclusively “black and brown” journalists after wave of criticism.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was only giving interviews to “black and brown” journalists and called the Chicago press corps “overwhelmingly white” in a tweet. Lightfoot is now double downing on this and more criticism is coming her way.

From The Daily Wire: 

“In a two-page letter to the media, Lightfoot, the first Black woman as well as the first openly gay mayor in Chicago’s history, praised her own 2019 election for ‘breaking barriers’ and took a shot at media organizations in the city for not adequately addressing ‘institutionalized racism’ in their ranks. Her decision to temporarily speak only to Black and Brown reporters, she said, was part of her lifelong battle to fight for diversity and inclusion,” Fox News reported late Wednesday.

In her letter, she accused Chicago media outlets of embracing “overwhelming whiteness and maleness,” claiming it is the mayor’s job to address the lack of diversity by filtering those who get direct access to the mayor.

“In looking at the absence of diversity across the City Hall press corps and other newsrooms, sadly it does not appear that many of the media institutions in Chicago have caught on and truly have not embraced this moment,” Lightfoot wrote. “I have been struck since my first day on the campaign trail back in 2018 by the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets, editorial boards, the political press corps, and yes, the City Hall press corps specifically.”

“If I as the black woman mayor, the first-ever, don’t challenge us, the collective us, to do better, to really make sure that in every institution it reflects the diversity, nuance, and texture, then shame on me,” Lightfoot continued.

This move by Lightfoot was criticized by most areas of the political spectrum for this move. One Latino news organization refused to interview Lightfoot even after she had lifted the moratorium on latino journolists.

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