1 of 2 | President Joe Biden looks towards reporters shouting questions as he walks towards the White House after landing in Marine One on Sunday, July 7, 2024 in Washington, DC. The President and First Lady are returning to the White House after campaign events in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Interviewers in Milwaukee and Philadelphia said they were given questions prior to interviews. Photo by Samuel Corum/UPI |
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July 7 (UPI) — A second radio host has come forward and said he was provided with questions prior to an interview with President Joe Biden, according to ABC News.
“Yes, I was given some questions for Biden,” Earl Ingram of CivicMedia told ABC News. Ingram, a prominent host of a Wisconsin radio station, interviewed Biden this week following a poor showing in the president’s poor debate performance.
“I didn’t get a chance to ask him all the things I wanted to ask,” Ingram said, and added that he used four of the five questions he was given.
Ingram is the second interviewer who said he was given questions to ask Biden while the president is trying to repair his image post-debate. Biden has said he will not drop out of the race despite pleas from some powerful party leaders to give way to a younger, more electable candidate.
Another local radio host who interviewed Biden this week told CNN she, too, was given questions prior to her show. Radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders has resigned from WURD Radio after admitting her interview contained pre-arranged questions.
“The questions were sent to me for approval. I approved them,” Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of “The Source” in Philadelphia, said during an interview Saturday on CNN.
“The interview featured pre-determined questions provided by the White House, which violates our practice of remaining an independent media outlet accountable to our listeners,” Sara Lomax, president and CEO of the Philadelphia-based station, announced in a statement posted Sunday on its website. “As a result, Ms. Lawful-Sanders and WURD Radio have mutually agreed to part ways, effective immediately.”
WURD is the only Black-owned talk radio station in Pennsylvania and Lomax said the station prides itself on being an independent, trustworthy voice for its primary audience of Black Philadelphians. She added that using questions provided before an interview “jeopardizes that trust and is not a practice that WURD Radio engages in or endorses as a matter of practice or official policy.”
Lawful-Sanders did an interview Saturday with CNN’s Victor Blackwell in which she described being given questions and deciding to ask some, but not all, of them.
“If the White House is trying now to prove the vim, vigor … of the president, I don’t know how they do that by sending questions first before the interview so that the president knows what’s coming,” said Blackwell.
A spokesperson for the Biden campaign said it is common practice to provide local media outlets with suggested questions for the president, but that there is no expectation that interviewers use them. The questions came from the campaign, not the White House, Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said.
“We do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions, and hosts are always free to ask the questions they think will best inform their listeners,” Hitt said. “In addition to these interviews, the President also participated in a press gaggle yesterday as well as an interview with ABC. Americans have had several opportunities to see him unscripted since the debate.”
Hitt added that the WURD interview ranged from questions about Biden’s debate performance to what he would deliver for Black Americans, a statement from Hitt said.
Blackwell said Lawful-Sanders and Ingram asked Biden “essentially the same questions.”