Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has told the city's media outlets that she would grant one-on-one interviews to mark the halfway point of her term, but with one condition: She will only speak with journalists of color, according to NBC Chicago.
The restrictions on who could interview the mayor garnered national attention after Mary Ann Ahern, a political reporter for NBC 5 Chicago, tweeted about the move, according to The Hill.
"I ran to break up the status quo that was failing so many. That isn't just in City Hall," Lightfoot tweeted Wednesday morning. "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."
Lightfoot called the racial make-up of the City Hall press corps "an imbalance that needs to change," adding that Chicago's local media "should reflect the multiple cultures that comprise it."
Some reporters have publicly criticized the policy, with one Chicago Tribune journalist turning down a scheduled interview in protest.
"I am a Latino reporter @chicagotribune whose interview request was granted for today," tweeted the newspaper's City Hall reporter Gregory Pratt. "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."