U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks at a campaign event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 7, 2024.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
The campaign of President Joe Biden asked for and received two edits to an interview he gave a Milwaukee radio station on the heels of his disastrous debate in late June against former President Donald Trump, the station said Thursday.
The disclosure by Civic Media of the edits comes days after its host for the Biden interview, and another Black radio host in Philadelphia, revealed the Biden campaign fed them questions in advance to ask the president.
It also comes amid sharpened scrutiny of Biden’s interviews and his ability to deliver on his message in unscripted settings without a teleprompter. During the June 27 debate against Trump, the president struggled to maintain his train of thought and at times delivered garbled responses to simple questions.
Since then, a growing number of Democratic lawmakers and other allies have called on Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential contest, citing questions about his competency and ability to serve another four-year term.
Civic Media, which aired the Biden interview by host Earl Ingram on July 4, said the president’s campaign asked Ingram’s production team to cut one comment in which Biden said he had, “more Blacks in my administration than any other president.”
The campaign also asked the show to edit out a short section of the interview related to Trump’s demand that the death penalty be given to a group of teenagers who were accused of raping a jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. Their convictions were later vacated after a serial rapist confessed to the crime, but not before each of the teens served time behind bars.
“I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he — but they said […] convicted of murder,” Biden said in the Ingram interview, before it was cut from the final version.
Civic Media said that right after Ingram taped the interview with Biden on July 3, the campaign called and requested the edits.
The production team for the show made the edits before the interview aired, after deciding that the requested changes were “non-substantive,” according to Civic Media.
The station said it disagreed with the decision to make the edits, and it posted clips online of the sections that were edited out, as well as the full unedited interview with Biden.
“With a high-profile interview comes a listener expectation that journalistic interview standards will be applied, even for non-news programming,” Civic Media said. “We did not meet those expectations.”
“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.”
A Biden campaign spokesperson told NBC News, when asked about the statement, “Hosts have always been free to ask the questions and air the segments they think will best inform their listeners.”
Civic Media’s disclosure comes five days after Ingram said Biden aides “gave me the exact questions to ask” the president in the interview.
“There was no back and forth,” Ingram told the Associated Press on Saturday, two days after his interview aired on 20 Wisconsin radio outlets.
Another Black radio show host, Andrea Lawful-Sanders of Philadelphia-based WURD, told CNN on Saturday that she received a list of eight questions from the Biden campaign for her own interview with the president, and that she approved asking four of those questions.
WURD on Sunday said that Lawful-Sanders and the station had “mutually agreed to part ways, effective immediately.”
The station said her interview “featured pre-determined questions provided by the White House, which violates our practice of remaining an independent media outlet accountable to our listeners.”
Civic Media in its statement said it “unequivocally stands by Earl Ingram and his team.”
“Earl is an invaluable voice for Milwaukee and Wisconsin, and remains a crucial member of the Civic Media organization,” the outlet said.
“The decision to make the requested edits to the interview was made in good faith. While we disagree with the decision, we stand by our team. This has been a learning experience and we will do better moving forward.”