As Mayor Lori Lightfoot approaches the two-year anniversary of her inauguration she is receiving a lot of media attention. This has led to her announcing that she will only do 1on1 interviews with journalists of color for this occasion.
She tweeted:
I ran to break up the status quo that was failing so many. That isn't just in City Hall. It's a shame that in 2021, the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly White in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American. Diversity and inclusion is imperative across all institutions including media. In order to progress we must change. This is exactly why I'm being intentional about prioritizing media requests from POC reporters on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my inauguration as mayor of this great city.
While many have praised her decision to create more equitable opportunities for people of color, she has been met with a lot of backlash calling her idea "racist" and "a violation of the freedom of the press."