Last week, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that on the second anniversary of her inauguration she would only grant one-on-one interviews to journalists of color. In defense of that statement, she pointed to the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets, editorial boards, the political press, and the City Hall press corps specifically. Newell invited Dr. William Davie and Dr. Robert ‘Bob’ Buckman from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette onto the show Tuesday to discuss the dust-up.
“First to you, Bill,” Newell began. “I was surprised that there was not a lot of pushback about this, not only from the media, but others specifically about how she felt that there were too many white folks and specifically white males in this industry. And she went on to say something that really struck me as odd. She says ‘the truth is, it’s too heavy a burden to bear on top of all other massive challenges our city faces in this moment to also have to take on the labor of educating white, mostly male members of the news media about the perils and complexities of implicit bias.’ Where's she going with that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” David said. “It sounds like she has taken her flag to plant it in a controversial way that will gather attention.I would modify the opinion that there hasn't been pushback. Tucker Carlson came out of the chute calling her a monster and a Nazi. My good friend and colleague Bob has noted on his blog that Howard Kurtz and Brian Stelter have taken up the cause and made it clear that the journalism establishment is not fond of this. But it's always a question of which controversial issue is going to get a lot of play in the news media, since these days, mainstream news media is worried about losing more hearts and minds to the idea that they're biased, they're not going to get any sympathy if they call out someone one way or the other.. But we have seen some pushback. The Wall Street Journal did a nice editorial piece on it. Carlson's a little bit too inflammatory for my taste, but he made it clear that this is not the way to go. Even our national associations have been different in their approaches.. I haven't seen any professional journalism groups say, yes, this is the way to approach it.”
“I haven't seen anyone sanction her, but I actually hadn't seen a lot of overt criticism of her in perpetuating this notion that she can't get a fair shake from the white media because she's a black elected official,” Newell said. “Are we admitting that it is a problem that she can't get a fair shake from white journalists?”
“I think she was responding not just to the fair shake, but she also said in her memo, there's a lot of qualified minority women journalists out there - and I keep seeing in my city council and in my elected officials a lot of people of color and women of color. Why are the journalists who are covering City Hall not fitting that demographic?” Davie said.
“So what is she saying in the end, then?” Newell said. “I don't understand, because she says that they've actually debated this internally in her administration. She goes on to say that for the past two years, more often than not, we have debated internally and then chosen to say nothing, to let it go, lest we be accused of whining about negative coverage or of playing the race card. So it seems to me that this woman honestly believes that if a journalist walks into the room and asks her tough questions about policy or otherwise that means she's not getting a fair shake from white journalists!”
Hear the entire conversation in the audio player below.
