Lori Lightfoot, 58, a Democrat, said she wanted to draw attention to the “overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets”.

“On the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my inauguration as mayor of this great city, I will be exclusively providing one-on-one interviews with journalists of colour,” she said in a two-page open letter.

“As the first black woman mayor of Chicago and the first openly gay mayor, my election in 2019 was hailed for breaking barriers to the halls of power,” Lightfoot said.

“Being mayor makes me uniquely situated to shine a spotlight on this most important issue.”

Lightfoot said the US “has faced a historic reckoning around systematic racism” and many institutions were addressing “deep-seated legacies of institutionalised racism”.

“Sadly it does not appear that many of the media institutions in Chicago have caught on and truly have not embraced this moment,” she said.

“The group of reporters assigned to cover City Hall is practically all white,” Lightfoot said.

“There are only a handful of beat reporters of colour in the City Hall press corps.”

She said it was “unacceptable” that no women of colour were assigned to cover the mayor’s office.

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) said that while it does not support the mayor’s tactics it welcomed her shining a “needed spotlight on the call for a greater commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion across the media industry”.

Gregory Pratt, a reporter of Latino origin with the Chicago Tribune said he had been granted an interview request with Lightfoot.

“However, I asked the mayor’s office to lift its condition on others and when they said no, we respectfully canceled,” Pratt said in a tweet.

“Politicians don’t get to choose who covers them.”