President Joe Biden on Monday speaks to the media at the White House in Washington, D.C. The White House on Thursday said that the president met with his physician in the days following his first debate performance against former President Donald Trump. Less Photo by ANDREW HARNIK/GETTY IMAGES
MILWAUKEE, WI (WSAU) – A Milwaukee radio host who exclusively interviewed President Joe Biden last week admitted on Thursday afternoon to using prepared questions and even editing out two potentially controversial comments made by the president.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Civic Media, a progressive and Wisconsin-based talk-radio station, acknowledged in a statement on Thursday that host Earl Ingram and his team agreed to make two edits to an interview with President Joe Biden at the request of the campaign before the broadcast aired, which they called below the organizations “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 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 Thursday statement read.
“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. Civic Media disagrees with the team’s judgments at the moment, both with respect to the handling of the interview questions and the decision to edit the interview audio,” the statement continued. When ABC News asked Ingram in an interview about using the prepared questions, he simply said, “Yes, I was given some questions for Biden.”
The two edits in question were provided by the outlet, saying at timestamp 5:20, the removal of “…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.” and at timestamp 14:15, about Donald Trump’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, the team was asked to remove, “I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he–but they said […] convicted of murder.”
This revelation comes as CNN reported on Thursday that sources who have spoken about the process of interviewing President Biden say it’s generally pretty scripted, saying, “The entire display is kind of an act. They would come and say, ‘Hey, the president is going to call on you about 25 minutes in and ask this question. What are the bullet points you’ll respond with?”
The Journal Sentinel was informed last weekend by a source acquainted with the Biden campaign’s booking process that the team will no longer provide questions, and Civic Media says they “unequivocally” stand by host Ed Ingram and his team.
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