Former Hawaii congresswoman and 2020 presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard slammed Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday and demanded her resignation after she instituted a policy granting interviews only to journalists of color.
Lightfoot confirmed the move Wednesday, saying the one-on-one interviews that mark the two-year anniversary of her inauguration will be offered only to reporters of color. She suggested Chicago-area news outlets are predominately white and that coverage of her administration has been adversely affected.
“Mayor Lightfoot’s blatant anti-white racism is abhorrent,” Gabbard wrote. “I call upon President Biden, Kamala Harris, and other leaders of our county—of all races—to join me in calling for Mayor Lightfoot’s resignation. Our leaders must condemn all racism, including anti-white.”
The policy fosters “diversity and inclusion” to push back against the “overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets,” Lightfoot claimed.
“By now, you may have heard the news that on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my inauguration as Mayor of this great City, I will be exclusively providing one-on-one interviews with journalists of color,” she said in a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner. “As a person of color, I have throughout my adult life done everything that I can to fight for diversity and inclusion in every institution that I have been a part of and being Mayor makes me uniquely situated to shine a spotlight on this most important issue.”
“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,” she continued.
Multiple members of the media were dismayed by the policy shift.
“I am a Latino reporter [at the Chicago Tribune] whose interview request was granted for today,” journalist Gregory Pratt said in a tweet Wednesday. “However, I asked the mayor’s office to lift its condition on others and when they said no, we respectfully canceled. Politicians don’t get to choose who covers them.”
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“I expressed my outrage. Nothing has changed,” NBC 5 political reporter Mary Ann Ahern told the Washington Examiner.
Lightfoot did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
