Lori Lightfoot: My Racism Is Reforming the News

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot defended her racially discriminatory media policy of granting interviews only to reporters from a minority background, claiming it has helped America’s newsrooms reform themselves and “do better.”

Lightfoot wrote that “on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my inauguration as [m]ayor of this great [c]ity, I will be exclusively providing one-on-one interviews with journalists of color” in order to combat “the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets.” The legal watchdog group Judicial Watch sued Lightfoot on the grounds that her policy violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

“On the anniversary of your inauguration, you gave interviews to only reporters of color, and you’re being now sued for that on the basis of discrimination,” said CNN’s “New Day” host John Berman in a singularly non-judgmental tone. “Your reaction?”

“Well, the lawsuit is completely frivolous,” replied Lightfoot, whose city boasts one of the highest homicide rates in the nation. “I’d use a more colorful term if we weren’t on TV.”

“I’m an African-American woman, to state the obvious. Every day when I look out across my podium, I don’t see people who look like me. But more to the point, I don’t see people who reflect the richness and diversity of this city,” she continued.

If the reporters in the city’s media pool perfectly reflected Chicago’s demographics, one out of every 3,500 would be a homicide victim.

“I started a long overdue conversation about diversity in newsrooms, in coverage,” Lightfoot continued. “You all are the mirrors on society. … I hope my conversation has pricked the consciousness of the people who do the hiring decisions in media rooms all across this city and, hopefully, across the country. We’ve got to do better.” she concluded last Friday.

Berman had previously given a platform to Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet to defend Lightfoot’s policy, saying, “I am not troubled by this” racial discrimination. CNN offered no coverage of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard when she called upon “President Biden, Kamala Harris, and other leaders of our county — of all races — to join me in” condemning “all racism, including anti-white” racism.

If Lightfoot hoped to spur media outlets into imposing racial hiring tests, she is too late. Numerous media outlets have embraced “diversity” via exclusion.

Earlier this month, iHeart Media announced that a job opening in its podcast division would be open only to minority applicants. “Diversity is incredibly important to our team and our company so we are looking at only diverse hires at this time,” wrote executive producer Molly Socha on a listserv. The job’s racial bar did not appear in the job’s public listing. Socha later ascribed her blatant racial discrimination to an “error in language.”

“I just want to clarify, ALL are welcome to apply and we will consider ALL qualified candidates,” she wrote. (Emphasis in original.) “That being said, in our efforts to elevate diverse voices in the predominately white podcast space, we strongly encourage engineers/editors of color — regardless of gender and sexual orientation — to apply.”

Last month, the financial media empire Bloomberg News added a new content vertical, Bloomberg Equality, which will “feature original journalism, such as data-based projects tracking the race and gender breakdown of companies’ employees as well as racial and ethnic disparities in vaccine distribution across the U.S.,” reported Digiday. “About half of Bloomberg’s new hires in 2020 were racially and ethnically diverse, according to the company.”

As far back as 2018, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) openly announced that a job opening for a “Trainee Multi-Media Journalist” position would be open only “for people from a black, Asian, or non-white ethnic minority background.”

Newsbeat is looking for a Trainee Multi-Media Journalist. This is a @_CreativeAccess scheme for people from a black, Asian or non-white ethnic minority background. Know anyone who’d be suitable? Share this with them! Full details here: https://t.co/uS5WORiz27 pic.twitter.com/wh05k7CsYu

— BBC Newsbeat (@BBCNewsbeat) January 17, 2018

The emphasis on excluding, silencing, or deplatforming reporters rather than creating new venues and voices tracks with the views of officials in the Obama administration. Obama’s closest personal adviser, Valerie Jarrett, brought in Mark Lloyd as the first-ever “Diversity Czar” at the Federal Communications Commission. At a 2005 conference, Lloyd said:

[W]e have really, truly good white people in important positions [in the media]. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem. We’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.

Meanwhile, America’s news consumers say they do not share the Left’s obsessive racial emphasis in media content or provision. Racial inequality is the topic that the highest percentage of Americans say is getting too much attention,” reported the Pew Research Center in April. In all, 38% of Americans think the issue already consumes an inordinate amount of media focus, while more than 40% of Americans believe the U.S. economy and immigration receive too little media coverage.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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