When President Joe Biden was interviewed by a Wisconsin radio station last week, his aides first told the station what to ask and then told them how to edit what Biden said in reply.
Civic Media admitted it made two cuts to the interview between Biden and host Earl Ingram as the White House tried to do damage control after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Civic Media admitted the cuts fell short of its “journalistic interview standards.”
“On Monday, July 8th, it was reported to Civic Media management that immediately after the phone interview was recorded, the Biden campaign called and asked for two edits to the recording before it aired,” Civic Media said in a statement.
“Civic Media management immediately undertook an investigation and determined that the production team at the time viewed the edits as non-substantive and broadcast and published the interview with two short segments removed, “the outlet said.
In one cut, Biden said, “and in addition to that, I have more blacks in my administration than any other president, all other presidents combined, and in major positions, cabinet positions.”
In another cut, part of Biden’s response to former President Donald Trump calling for the death penalty for five non-white men charged with raping a white woman in Central Park in 1989 was removed. It said, “I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he–but they said […] convicted of murder.”
“With a high-profile interview comes a listener expectation that journalistic interview standards will be applied, even for non-news programming. We did not meet those expectations,” the station’s statement said.
“Civic Media disagrees with the team’s judgments in the moment, both with respect to the handling of the interview questions and the decision to edit the interview audio,” the statement read.
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Ingram has admitted Biden’s team had input into the questions the president was asked.
“Yes, I was given some questions for Biden,” he said, according to ABC.
Ingram said he used four of the five questions he was given to ask.
“I didn’t get a chance to ask him all the things I wanted to ask,” he said.
The Biden team also planted questions asked last week by Philadelphia radio station WURD, leading to the departure of host Andrea Lawful-Sanders, who interviewed Biden
The station said Lawful-Sanders had arranged the interview “without knowledge, consultation or collaboration with … management” – and violated editorial independence guidelines, by accepting the questions, according to the U.K.’s Guardian.
The interview became famous because even with planted questions, Biden made a major gaffe.
“By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, the first black woman to serve with a black president, proud of the first black woman in the Supreme Court,” he said at one point, according to Newsweek.
