Prairie State Wire

Three days after she broke the news that his family was spending his statewide lockdown at an equestrian estate in Wisconsin, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker revoked longtime Chicago reporter Amy Jacobson’s access to his daily press briefing, claiming she is not an “impartial journalist.”

Pritzker’s press secretary, Jordan Abudayyeh, emailed Jacobson this afternoon to inform her of the ban.

Jacobson, who co-hosts a morning drive time talk show on AM 560 with Dan Proft, worked as a general assignment television reporter for WMAQ-TV Channel 5 (NBC) in Chicago from 1996-2007.

On Friday, Jacobson was first to report that Pritzker’s wife and children, who have spent the last seven weeks at the family’s $12 million horse farm in Florida, had moved to another family horse farm in Wisconsin, just across the Illinois border.

“Now I’m hearing that Gov. Pritzker has a 1,000 acre horse farm in Kenosha, WI,” she tweeted Friday evening. “That‘s where the family is tending to the animals tonight. You know, essential workers while the rest of us have been deemed ‘non essential.’”

Pritzker later admitted his wife and children weren’t in Illinois, but claimed they were “essential” to work on his Wisconsin farm, which he said has lifestock.

Abudayyeh criticized Jacobson for her attendance at a downtown Chicago rally of Pritzker critics on Saturday.

“This weekend you attended and spoke at a political rally to fire up the crowd in opposing the Governor’s policies to combat COVID-19,” Abudayyeh said. “An impartial journalist would not have attended that rally in that capacity and therefore you will no longer be invited to participate as an impartial journalist."

In the eye of the (impartial) beholder

Pritzker’s suggestion that he only allows “impartial” journalists to attend press briefings singled out Jacobson, but not other Illinois reporters whose public opinions have been supportive of his policies.

Rich Miller of Capitol Fax has been the state’s most prolific statehouse opinion writer and analyst for the past three decades. He’s a daily attendee of Pritzker’s press briefings— and a vocal supporter of the governor’s statewide lockdown.

In his weekly syndicated column on Sunday, Miller applauded Pritzker's decisions and advised him on how to better communicate with Illinoisans and mitigate criticism.

"I get the governor’s pitch, but I do this for a living and most people don’t," Miller wrote. "I am also no fan of reopening too fast. It makes me feel like we’ve gone through all of this for nothing and will have to do this all over again."

In criticizing Jacobson, Pritzker's press secretary Abudayyeh referenced her previous position, as a political television reporter in Springfield from 2014 to 2017, covering Governor Bruce Rauner.

“As a former journalist myself, I have the utmost respect for journalists who do the tough work to hold public officials accountable while preserving the unbiased coverage we all rely on," she said.

Abudayyeh, who Illinois State Board of Elections (ISBE) records show voted Democrat in the 2014 gubernatorial primary, grilled Rauner in an "exclusive" March 2017 one-on-one interview.

"Have we dug ourselves into a hole while waiting on your turnaround agenda," she asked. "You cannot pass a budget without the turnaround agenda because you'll look like a failure, right?"

Abudayyeh didn't tell Rauner she was herself simultaneously interviewing for a new job. Six weeks later, she would announce her new position as Pritzker's campaign spokesman.

A Chicago City Wire analysis of 366 primary ballots cast over the past three decades by 68 active political reporters, editors and news anchors from leading media in Chicago and across the state found that nearly nine in 10 (86 percent) ballots cast were for Democrats. Only four of 68 journalists (6 percent) were Republican leaning.

The most ardent Democrats included Crain's Chicago Business political reporter Greg Hinz (16 Democrat votes, zero Republican) and Chicago Sun-Times political reporter and metro editor Scott Fornek (14 Democrat votes, zero Republican).

ISBE records show Jacobson has voted in eight primaries, four for Democrats and four for Republicans.