Biden campaign has long fed softball questions to friendly interviewers
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US President Biden has given fewer interviews than any modern president at this point in his presidency.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
WASHINGTON - A few days before his State of the Union address in March, President Joe Biden called in to Afternoon Vibes, a popular radio show in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The host, Ms Jessica Williams, asked him if he would list his accomplishments, say why he had decided to run for a second term and explain what was at stake for Black voters in the election.
That same day, Mr Biden called into DeDe In The Morning in Dallas, where he was asked if he would list his accomplishments, say why he had decided to run for a second term and explain what was at stake for Black voters in the election.
Nine days later, the president called into a third show, this time in Milwaukee. “What do you think is at stake in this election for Black Americans specifically?” the host, Ms Michelle Bryant, asked.
A close look at more than two dozen radio and podcast interviews given by Mr Biden over the past two years reveals a distinct pattern: In appearance after appearance, the president has been served up nearly identical questions, prescreened or suggested ahead of time by campaign staff members. And in nearly every case, the questions set the president up to deliver on-message talking points, without notable flubs.
The review sheds light on a tactic the Biden campaign has used liberally to control the president’s interactions in public, one that appears to have accelerated as the election has approached. Biden has given fewer interviews with news outlets than any modern president, and many of those have been with friendly interviewers who take questions and talking points from the campaign.
Mr Biden is far from the only politician to dodge the scrutiny of traditional news media or to try to game interviews to avoid awkward moments. But his reliance on a protective bubble has taken on new importance in the wake of his fumbling debate performance
As increasing numbers of Democrats call on him to end his run
Last week, the Biden campaign acknowledged that it has frequently suggested questions to interviewers after The Associated Press reported that two radio shows had been given questions in advance of interviews broadcast on July 4. The host of one, Andrea Lawful-Sanders of WURD in Philadelphia, left her job with the station after the revelation.
The other programme, The Earl Ingram Show, acknowledged on Thursday that it had edited the interview before broadcasting it at the request of the Biden campaign. In a statement, Civic Media, a Wisconsin-based radio network that produces the show, said two clips totalling 16 seconds had been cut. The decision did not meet its audience’s expectations for journalistic standards, it said.
“It’s not at all an uncommon practice for interviewees to share topics they would prefer,” Ms Lauren Hitt, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. “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 viewers.”
Ms Hitt did not answer specific questions about the request to edit the interview in Wisconsin, which ran on 20 stations around the state.
The campaign indicated that it would stop suggesting questions for interviews.
Not every interview with Mr Biden seemed to include prebaked questions, which came most often in radio, rather than on-camera, interviews, to which the president can call in from the White House and do several in succession. In some cases, hosts asked only the questions they were given, while in others, they added questions of their own choosing.
In conversations with The New York Times, hosts and producers of some of those shows said the questions had not been imposed on them, and interviewers had not been barred from bringing up other topics. In some instances, they said, Biden campaign staff members emailed questions to ask; in others, they sent bullet points that hosts could easily rephrase as on-air queries.
“They did want us to ask four specific questions,” said Mr George Cook, the head of content and the general manager for the company that produces “DeDe in the Morning,” which is syndicated on more than 80 stations nationwide. He said musicians and celebrity guests often send in questions before interviews. His hosts tend to ignore them, he said, but “because it was the president, it was different.”
At least once, the Biden campaign has specifically asked an interviewer not to mention certain topics. The campaign, through a social media marketing firm it has retained, offered Joshua Doss, a Chicago-based influencer, a possible interview with the president at August’s Democratic National Convention but asked that he not bring up the Israel-Hamas war.
Elected officials from both major parties have increasingly turned to podcasters, influencers and entertainers, rather than journalists, to get their message out.
Trump often turns to the safe space provided by right-wing influencers and conservative media figures, rather than face potentially difficult questions from mainstream journalists. In June, for example, his campaign cancelled an interview with a local television station in Virginia after reviewing questions submitted by the reporter.
For Mr Biden, friendly environments appear to have helped him stay on message while speaking to constituencies critical to his re-election chances, and to have done so without notable flubs or lapses. But the practice does little to assuage concerns that the president is ill-prepared to defend his record when he is forced to go off script or improvise.
“It’s toxic,” said Ms Martha Joynt Kumar, an emeritus professor of political science at Towson University in Maryland who tracks interactions between presidents and the news media. “There’s an element of panic when you’re doing that kind of thing. It’s not a signal that you want to send.” NYTIMES
