The Chicago Tribune canceled an interview with Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday in protest at her decision to exclude white reporters from one-on-one interviews on the occasion of her second anniversary in office, reporter Gregory Pratt noted.
Pratt, who is Latino, noted that he had been granted an interview under Lightfoot’s racially exclusionary policy, which was revealed Tuesday, but had used that opportunity to ask her to end that policy. When she refused, the Tribune canceled the interview.
Lightfoot attempted to defend her policy on Wednesday in a letter to news outlets, attacking “systemic racism” in the media.
When she took the oath of office in 2019, Lightfoot swore to “support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Illinois.” The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has been interpreted to imply that racial discrimination is prohibited; the Illinois Constitution bars racial discrimination in employment and housing, and also condemns “communications that … incite violence, hatred, abuse or hostility toward, a person or group of persons by reason of or by reference to” race.
Other journalists have been happy to endorse the mayor’s policy, notably Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, a favorite of the Obama administration, who told CNN that she was “not troubled” by Lightfoot’s exclusion of white journalists.
Other journalists noted that Lightfoot had declined interviews with journalists “of color” who had seemed to be critical of her.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it). His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.