A radio show hosted by an anti-Trump broadcaster edited an interview with President Joe Biden, removing segments that were controversial and made the president look bad.
The Earl Ingram Show was one of two radio programs that were contacted by the Biden campaign with an offer to interview Biden following the June 27 debate, which has become a pivotal moment in the Biden presidency due to Biden’s disastrous performance.
The interview with Biden was recorded July 3 and aired July 4 on radio stations across Wisconsin, without the sections that the Biden campaign had requested to be removed.
The following week, Civic Media management was informed that the Biden campaign had asked for two edits of the interview, which were granted by the Earl Ingram production team.
The two edits were:
1. At time 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.”
2. At time 14:15, in reference to Donald Trump’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, the removal of “I don’t know if they even call for their hanging or not, but he–but they said […] convicted of murder.”
“In the interest of transparency, and consistent with Civic Media’s mission and core values, we are sharing the edited segments now, and making the full, unedited interview available. Given the gravity of the current political moment, the stakes in this election, and the importance of public scrutiny of public officials in the highest office, we believe it is important to share this information,” the radio station wrote.
Ingram is in the never-Trump camp. On Ingram’s July 11 show, he starts out with a monologue warning about Trump and the dangers he would pose to the country if elected again.”
The news station sticks by Ingram but says the show made a mistake in editing the Biden interview.
“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,” the station wrote.
“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. We have taken this opportunity as a new media organization to clarify our internal policies to ensure that everyone in the organization understands the standards we expect for live and pre-recorded interviews, particularly for commentators and other non-news personnel. A policy defining Civic Media’s content and production standards for non-news programming that covers our opinion content, including The Earl Ingram Show, is in the process of being reviewed and finalized, based in part on our published Civic Media News Ethics and Standards that applies to hard news,” the station wrote.
The news of the edits to the Biden interview come on the heels of revelations that media hosts have been given questions in advance by the Biden Administration, prior to the president being made available for interviews.
