Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot marked the two-year anniversary of her inauguration by only giving one-on-one interviews with Black journalists. The mayor, making the announcement on Wednesday, said she's been stunned by the “overwhelmingly” white reporters in the city.

“I ran to break up the status quo that was failing so many,” Lightfoot tweeted. “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.”

The 58-year-old continued the series of tweets, emphasizing a need for diversity across all institutions, including media.

"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," she wrote.

Lightfoot, who is the city's first Black woman and openly Gay mayor, said the local media should reflect the multiple cultures that comprise the city.

"We must be intentional about doing better. I believed that when running for office. I stand on this belief now. It’s time for the newsrooms to do better and build teams that reflect the make-up of our city," she said.

The unique approach received some praise from the community, but also drew scrutiny from a diverse group of reporters.

“I am a Latino reporter @chicagotribune whose interview request was granted for today. However, I asked the mayor’s office to lift its condition on others and when they said no, we respectfully canceled,” Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Pratt tweeted. “Politicians don’t get to choose who covers them.”

Political reporter Mary Ann Ahern also voiced her concern on local radio, USA Today reported. 

“To choose a reporter based on the color of their skin is really pretty outrageous,” Ahern, who is white, said on WGN Radio. “Does she think I’m racist? Is that what she’s saying?”

The TRiiBE, a Chicago-based digital Black media platform, was granted a one-on-one interview with Lightfoot on Wednesday.

Reporter Bella Bahhs represented The TRiiBE in Wednesday's interview and heavily scrutinized the 58-year-old, challenging the mayor to prove that she sincerely relates to the community she is supposed to represent.

One of Bahhs' questions specifically demanded Lightfoot to explain who she is "accountable to in this world."

"I’m accountable to my heritage. I’m accountable to the sacrifice that my parents made to put me in a position that I could succeed beyond their wildest expectations and dreams for themselves," the Chicago politician said. "I’m accountable to the people who elected me [and] who wanted to see something different.”

But the reporter wasn't satisfied with the answers.

"I’d hoped our first Black woman mayor would have mentioned the Black and brown Chicagoans who have been subjected to redlining and government-sanctioned anti-Blackness, and how those issues shaped the lives of many Black people whose families migrated from the South only to discover there was no refuge from racial violence here either," Bahhs wrote in her column.

According to the journalist, many Black Chicago families have continued to struggle with housing and job discrimination, school segregation, fascist police and more since the Great Migration.

Bahhs continued her line of questioning and concluded that the mayor, who was raised in a predominantly white community in Massillon, Ohio, failed to identify some of the Black community on the west and south sides of Chicago. The reporter also said Lightfoot demonstrated a lack of understanding of LGBTQ+ issues.   

"When I asked her which Black Chicago liberation struggle resonated most with her, she didn’t mention any of the Black queer-led movements to end criminalization of Black LGBTOIA people and dismantle systems that perpetuate institutional racism and intersectional oppression," Bahhs wrote. "Instead, she told me about her brother Brian Lightfoot’s 17-year stint in a federal prison for possession of and intent to distribute crack cocaine."

Some who supported the mayor's controversial decision said she has the right to grant interviews exclusively to Black journalists.

Others also said that people aren't understanding Lightfoot's reasoning.

According to the Pew Research Center, which looked at data from 2012 to 2016, more than 77% of newsroom employees, including reporters, editors, photographers and videographers, are white. The study, however, shows that there is a greater diversity of younger newsroom employees.

Black-JournalistsChicagoLori Lightfoot