Biden Campaign Asked Wisconsin Radio Station for Edits to President’s Interview
Civic Media, the Wisconsin talk-radio network, admitted Thursday to making two requested edits to a recent interview with President Joe Biden.
The network fell in hot water last week when it was revealed they conducted a July 4 interview with Biden with questions provided by the president’s team. Now they’re saying in a statement they also made two edits to the interview before it aired.
“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,” the station 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 statement continued, “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 in the moment, both with respect to the handling of the interview questions and the decision to edit the interview audio.”
The first of the two edits occurred at the 5:20 mark which removed “…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.”
The second edit came at 14:15 and was in reference to Donald Trump’s call for the Central Park Five to receive the death penalty. What was cut: “I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he — but they said … convicted of murder.”
The station confirmed they would make the unedited interview available online.
The released statement also said the station was standing by their interviewer Earl Ingram, who was interviewed by CNN along with Philadelphia radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders — who was also sent interview questions by the Biden campaign — over the weekend about the incident.
“Civic Media unequivocally stands by Earl Ingram and his team,” the statement noted. “Earl is an invaluable voice for Milwaukee and Wisconsin, and remains a crucial member of the Civic Media organization. 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.”
Lawful-Sanders didn’t see the same leniency with their employer that Ingram did. On Sunday, WURD announced they were parting ways with the radio host after news of the interview broke.
“Agreeing to a pre-determined set of questions jeopardizes that trust and is not a practice that WURD Radio engages in or endorses as a matter of practice or official policy,” the station said in its statement.
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