Listen, Lori Lightfoot is a lot of things. She is the first openly gay, African-American woman to serve as Chicagoโs 56th mayor. She is the first mayor to show up to a press conference dressed as โRona Destroyer.โ And she was the first political official to tell kids to stay their ass in the house because their jump shot is always going to be weak.
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So did it surprise anyone when Lightfoot noted in May that she would only be granting interview requests with minority journalists? Or, would it shock anyone to learn that she doubled down on that statement as she called the number of non-white journalists covering her unacceptable?
โI would absolutely do it again. Iโm unapologetic about it because it spurred a very important conversation, a conversation that needed to happen, that should have happened a long time ago,โ Lightfoot told the New York Times.
โHere is the bottom line for me: to state the obvious, Iโm a Black woman mayor. Iโm the mayor of the third-largest city in the country, obviously I have a platform, and itโs important to me to advocate on things that I believe are important,โ Lightfoot said.
โGoing back to why I ran, to disrupt the status quo. The media is critically important to our democracyโฆthe media is in a time of incredible upheaval and disruption but our city hall press corps looks like itโs 1950 or 1970,โ she added.
Lightfoot said that the motive wasnโt to exclude folks, but a push to get newsrooms โfocused on diversity.โ
โIn Chicago, we have a huge amount of diverse media talent. Weโve got schools that...that are best in class across the country, and I would say, really, across the world,โ she said.
โSo the absence of journalists of color, covering the mayor of the third-largest city in the country is absolutely unacceptable. And so I decided to say something about it,โ the mayor added.
Lightfoot did note that politicians shouldnโt be able to determine who covers them.
โNo, itโs 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?โ she said.
โOne 24-hour period and it was like peopleโs heads exploded. I had journalists saying, โDoes the mayor think Iโm racist?โ No, itโs not about individuals. Itโs about systemic racism,โ the mayor added.
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