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A Philadelphia radio station has cut ties with its host after she revealed that Joe Biden’s campaign team sent a list of pre-approved questions prior to an interview with the president.
Sara Lomax, the president and CEO of WURD Radio, posted a statement to the company's website on Sunday announcing that the station and radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders had “mutually agreed to part ways”.
On Saturday, Lawful-Sanders told CNN that four of the questions she asked Biden were provided to her by his team.
“The questions were sent to me for approval, I approved of them,” Lawful-Sanders said.
“I got several questions. Eight of them. And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”
WURD issued a statement titled “Accountability, Access, and A Path Forward: Why Black Media Matters,” which claims that Lawful-Sanders negotiated the interview on her own without the knowledge of the radio station.
Lomax insisted that “WURD Radio remains an independent voice that our audience can trust will hold elected officials accountable.”
“As Pennsylvania’s only independent Black-owned talk radio station, WURD Radio has cultivated that trust with our audience over our 20-year history,” Lomax wrote. “This is something we take very seriously. 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.”
She said that the station was “not a mouthpiece for the Biden or any other administration.”
A Biden campaign official defended the campaign’s decision to send a list of pre-approved questions to Lawful-Sanders.
“It’s not at all an uncommon practice for interviewees to share topics they would prefer,” Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in a statement to The New York Times. “Hosts are always free to ask the questions they think will best inform their listeners.”
Lawful-Sanders told the Times on Saturday that she “never once felt pressured to ask certain questions” from Biden's campaign team.
“I chose questions that were most important to the Black and brown communities we serve in Philadelphia,” she said. “Those questions proved to be exactly what Black and brown communities desired.”
It has also emerged that Biden’s team had also given pre-approved questions to The Earl Ingram Show ahead of his appearance this week. The show is syndicated on WAUK in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
“Yes, I was given some questions for Biden,” the show's host, Earl Ingram, told ABC News.
Ingram reportedly was given five questions, and asked four of them.
“I didn't get a chance to ask him all the things I wanted to ask,” he said, adding that he did not think there was anything wrong with asking the pre-approved questions.
“To think that I was gonna get an opportunity to ask any question to the President of the United States, I think, is a bit more than anybody should expect,” he said.
The two radio interviews were pitted as crucial opportunities for Biden to claw back confidence among Americans following his dismal debate performance last week.
The president has vowed to continue his campaign despite fierce scrutiny and growing calls, including from a rising number of Democratic lawmakers, for him to step aside in the 2024 race.
