If Mayor Brandon Johnson even had a honeymoon with the news media, it’s over after less than 10 months in office.
The City Hall press corps has turned hostile, openly frustrated with a mayor who is seldom accessible and evasive when he does take questions.
Newspaper editorials are critical and, at times, disdainful while portraying Johnson as in over his head.
The problem isn’t solely about frustration within the City Hall press corps. Ultimately, when a mayor’s relationship with the media is fraught, communication with the people he or she serves suffers.
In an apparent effort to turn things around, Johnson scheduled a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board this week that would have been his first.
But Monday’s meeting ended abruptly — after Johnson and board members had introduced themselves — when press secretary Ronnie Reese insisted the entire session be off the record. Editorial Page editor Lorraine Forte refused to accept those unprecedented terms. Johnson allowed Reese to make the argument for him and never said a word before signing off from the Zoom session.
The relationship between the mayor and the messengers looked like it had nowhere to go but up after Lori Lightfoot, who engaged in verbal combat with the City Hall press corps, threatened to go around them and made national headlines by confining her midterm interviews to reporters of color.
In contrast, the likable Johnson seemed like a candidate for Mr. Congeniality. But Johnson appears to have quickly exhausted the bank of goodwill.
“Something has turned … The benefit of the doubt is gone,” said David Greising, president and CEO of the Better Government Association. “Either he has to reassess and engage … or it’s going to be a really troubled term in office. … The time to fix this problem is running out.”
Veteran media strategist Peter Giangreco, who advised mayoral challenger Sophia King, said there is “blood in the water” with Johnson’s fast-souring relationship with the media. He cited a recent poll conducted for an education reform group showing only 21% of registered Chicago voters surveyed approved of Johnson’s performance as mayor, and added other polling “seems to agree” with that number.
“The mayor had a lot of goodwill coming out of the election but has maybe blown through all of that goodwill and has to start from scratch and rebuild credibility with the media and with the voters. That’s hard to do,” Giangreco said. “We were extraordinarily patient with Mayor Lightfoot going through the pandemic. We gave her plenty of opportunity to shine. It didn’t happen. This honeymoon is much shorter. And there is a growing suspicion that someone who’s a very good candidate and a very talented politician is not necessarily a very good mayor.”
Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson, who spent 12 years as Chicago’s inspector general, said Johnson is “unquestionably a gifted rhetorician” who spent the “greater part of his career in the realm of narrative and message and advocacy.” But those are vastly different skills than being well-versed and prepared enough to field questions from reporters and explain himself to the public.
Johnson’s relationship with the news media is “at a remarkably low place,” Ferguson added, considering the “great deal of allowance afforded new mayors” in general.
“There’s still time to turn it around, but the turnaround needs to be immediate, and it needs to be stark and clear because the problems this mayor walks into and inherits — these weren’t put on him. These were the chronic ills and challenges that he campaigned on meeting and addressing,” Ferguson said.
Chicagoans are a forgiving bunch, but only if you “acknowledge the stumbles along the way” and change gears, he said.
“That requires more communication rather than less communication. But nine months in, it is a frightening deficit given the magnitude of the problems and the magnitude of the legitimacy that’s needed to lead the public in addressing those problems,” Ferguson said.
The bizarre news conference Johnson held after Thursday’s City Council meeting was a watershed moment for him — and not in a good way.
Two questions dominated the nearly hourlong exchange with reporters.
One centered on whether Johnson had secured the deal he needed to complete his plan to cancel the ShotSpotter contract, while still keeping the gunshot detection technology embedded in 12 of 22 police districts until Sept. 22 — long enough to get the city past the traditionally violent summer months and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The second question was why Johnson reneged on an agreement to seek $70 million in additional migrant funding from the City Council after Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Johnson’s political patron, had pledged to seek $250 million in additional funding for Chicago’s migrant crisis.
Asked repeatedly about the contract extension, Johnson did not answer directly. Nor would he provide a simple “yes” or “no” to the pressing question of whether ShotSpotter would be shut off.
“It may be a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question for you. But I will respectfully ask that you ask your question and allow me to answer the question in the way in which I want to. I don’t dictate the question. So please don’t dictate how I answer a question,” he said.
Johnson was just as combative in explaining his reluctance to fill in the $70 million migrant funding gap. He repeatedly refused to answer whether the city would commit to new funding.
“All I’m saying is that no one in this city — let’s make it broader — no one in the state of Illinois, in this country, is questioning Mayor Brandon Johnson’s commitment to this mission,” Johnson said.
Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks to the media after a City Council meeting at City Hall on Thursday. At that news conference, Johnson repeatedly refused to provide direct answers to two key questions — one on ShotSpotter, the other on funding for Chicago’s ongoing migrant crisis.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
“They had no game plan of how they were going to answer. It was a lack of prep and [of] being able to think on your feet that all came together in a pretty abysmal way,” Giangreco said. “This administration needs to put together a better communications team because they’re ill-serving the mayor.”
Former Mayor Jane Byrne, whose husband, Jay McMullen, was a longtime reporter for the Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times, understood the media and played the game well. She spent the first half of her administration as a headline machine, doing hallway interviews three times a day — but spent the second half saying as little as possible, on the advice of media strategist David Sawyer.
Former Mayor Harold Washington was charming and self-deprecating, using his sense of humor and vast vocabulary to disarm hostile questioners.
Former Mayor Richard M. Daley surrounded himself with department heads who could answer the pressing questions of the day to avoid being put on the spot. When scandals mounted, many uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times, Daley openly ridiculed the Sun-Times’ City Hall reporter, surrounding himself with sycophants who would laugh at his abusive jokes.
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel was notoriously controlling and a maestro of messaging. He prepared for every news conference and interview as if studying for a final exam.
Lightfoot came to view the press as out to get her. As media training for city department heads was discussed at one cabinet meeting, Lightfoot grabbed the microphone and referred to the press as “total f---ing dumb-dumbs,” according to sources in attendance.
Johnson goes weeks at a time without making himself available for reporters’ questions. When he finally does, his answers sound more like campaign rhetoric. It’s clearly time for a course correction.
“Even though Lori was combative, she still was engaging, and her version of reality was being reported. But when you don’t engage and you don’t articulate answers that are responsive to the questions, you don’t get your message out. That’s his biggest challenge,” Greising said.
“The phrases he’s uttering are one-off cliches from when he was campaigning, and it would appear reporters are beginning to tune that out,” Greising said. “The lack of serious engagement is undermining not only the ability of the press to work with this administration but the public’s confidence that he is doing the work.”
Ferguson argued Johnson’s “transparency challenges” are not unlike those confronted by other Chicago mayors. What’s different is that the “expectations of the public” have “evolved with the advent of social media and the 24/7 news cycle,” he said.
“Here we have a chief executive who has said that the city has never seen a mayor like him and he’s a different kind of mayor, and when he says that, we should take him at his word,” Ferguson said.
“That almost impels the need for a great deal more transparency and communication to bring us all into an understanding of who he is and how he’s going about things … In the absence of that — stepping up to that contemporary transparency bar in the context of being a different kind of mayor — we will have what I think we’re seeing, which is a rapid spiral in legitimacy and confidence.”
