Non-white defense

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has defended her controversial decision to grant interview requests only to minority journalists — calling the number of nonwhites covering her “unacceptable.”

“I would absolutely do it again. I’m unapologetic about it because it spurred a very important conversation, a conversation that needed to happen, that should have happened a long time ago,” Lightfoot told The New York Times’ “Sway” host Kara Swisher on Monday of the temporary May declaration.

“Here is the bottom line for me, to state the obvious, I’m a black woman mayor. I’m the mayor of the third-largest city in the country, obviously I have a platform, and it’s important to me to advocate on things that I believe are important,” Lightfoot — whose city is in the midst of a plague of gun violence and is on track to surpass last year’s total of 48 mass shootings — told Swisher.

“Going back to why I ran, to disrupt the status quo. The media is critically important to our democracy . . . the media is in a time of incredible upheaval and disruption but our city hall press corps looks like it’s 1950 or 1970,” she added.

Lightfoot urged media outlets to be “focused on diversity,” but she also conceded politicians should not get to decide who covers them.