A second local radio host told ABC News on Saturday that he was provided with a list of questions ahead of his interview with President Joe Biden this week.
“Yes, I’ve been asked questions of Biden,” CivicMedia’s Earl Ingram told ABC News. Ingram, a prominent Wisconsin radio host, interviewed Biden this week following his debate performance.
Ingram said he was asked five questions and ended up asking four.
“I didn’t get a chance to ask him all the things I wanted to ask him,” he said.
Ingram is the second interviewer to say Biden advisers provided her with questions to ask the president this week. Earlier in the day, another local radio host who interviewed Biden this week told CNN she was given questions to ask Biden ahead of the interview.
“We do not condition interviews on accepting these questions, and hosts are always free to ask the questions they believe will best inform their listeners,” the Biden campaign told ABC News on Saturday.
Ingram told ABC he didn’t see anything particularly wrong with the practice. “To think that I was going to have the opportunity to ask the president of the United States a question, I think that’s a little more than you would expect,” he said.
He added that he was grateful for the opportunity to interview Biden.
“The fact that they gave me that opportunity… definitely meant a lot to me,” Ingram said.
On CNN earlier Saturday, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of WURD’s “The Source,” said Biden officials provided her with a list of eight questions ahead of their interview with Biden.
“The questions were sent to me for approval; I approved them,” she said.
“I received several questions, eight of them,” she continued. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”
In response to Lawful-Sanders, Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement that it was “not uncommon” for interviewees to share their favorite topics. She noted that Lawful-Sanders was “free” to ask whatever questions she deemed appropriate. She also stressed that the campaign sent the questions, not the White House as other reports have alleged.
“It is not uncommon for respondents to share their topic preferences. These questions were relevant to the news of the day – the president was asked about his performance in the debate as well as what he had done for black Americans,” the statement said.
“We do not condition our interviews on the acceptance of these questions, and the hosts are always free to ask the questions they believe will best inform their audience. In addition to these interviews, the president also participated in a press conference yesterday as well as an interview with ABC. Americans have had several opportunities to see him unscripted since the debate.”
A source familiar with Biden’s booking process told ABC News that going forward, they will “refrain” from offering suggested questions to interviewers.
“While interview hosts have always been free to ask any questions they wish, going forward we will refrain from offering suggested questions.”
Another local radio host, Sherwin Hughes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said that when he interviewed Biden last month, the White House did not send him any questions to ask, and he said there were no prerequisites for the interviews — “none of that at all,” he told ABC News.
He said that beforehand, he and the White House discussed general topics he wanted to cover in the interview, including the Affordable Care Act, and that the White House relayed what he described as “the messaging points they wanted to communicate,” including how Biden differed from Trump.
Darian Morgan, known as “Big Tigger” on V-103 in Atlanta, interviewed Biden in May and told ABC News he was sent “sample questions” but was “never asked” to stick to them.
“They sent me some sample questions, but there was no absolute directive to stick to those questions,” Morgan told ABC News.
Morgan said the process was no different from other interviews he has conducted, saying it is “not an uncommon practice.”
“In my career interviewing elected officials, a lot of people like to do that,” he said.
