A Wisconsin radio network acknowledged Thursday that it agreed to edit out parts of an interview with President Joe Biden before it aired last week at the request of his re-election campaign.
Civic Media said in a statement Thursday that “The Earl Ingram Show” conducted a phone interview with Biden on July 3 — one of two that aired the next day. The network said it learned Monday that the program had edited out two parts of the interview at the Biden campaign’s request.
In the statement, the network said that “the production team at the time viewed the edits as non-substantive and broadcast and published the interview with two short segments removed.”
One of the parts edited out centered on Biden’s claims about diversity in his administration — specifically that his administration has employed more Black people than any of his predecessors combined.
Roughly five minutes into the interview, Biden noted that he had selected a Black woman to serve as vice president and said he had appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to be seated on the Supreme Court.
“I have more Blacks in my administration than any other president, all of the presidents combined, and in major positions, Cabinet positions,” Biden said in a part of the interview that was not aired.
Another edit was of a part of the interview that referred to former President Donald Trump’s past comments urging the death penalty for the “Central Park Five,” the five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly accused and convicted of raping a white jogger in New York City in 1989.
Reached for comment, Civic Media referred NBC News to its statement on the matter, which said that it stood by its team but that it had fallen short of journalistic interview standards.
“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 network said. “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.”
Civic Media CEO Sage Weil also said Thursday in an interview on the network’s “The Todd Allbaugh Show” that “the important thing is that we learn from our mistakes and use these opportunities in order to establish and continue to build trust with our audience, that we’re going to do the right thing.”
NBC News reported last week that Ingram was one of two radio hosts who said campaign aides gave them questions to ask Biden, diverging from standard journalistic practice.
Asked whether the Biden campaign requested the edits, a campaign spokesperson said, “Hosts have always been free to ask the questions and air the segments they think will best inform their listeners.”
The same spokesperson has not responded to a second request for a response specific to the editing question.
Andrea Lawful-Sanders, who hosts WURD’s “The Source” in Philadelphia, said she had also received questions to ask Biden.
NBC News reported on White House personnel data filed with Congress last year that indicated that 49% of White House staff members identified as racially or ethnically diverse, according to the Biden administration’s analysis.
Zoë Richards
Zoë Richards is a politics reporter for NBC News.
Aaron Gilchrist
contributed
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