Subject: Radio host fired after Biden interview
...for revealing that the White House gave the station the question in advance.
https://www.washingtonexaminer...
Andrea Lawful-Sanders, the first person to interview President Joe Biden after his debate with former President Donald Trump on July 3, was fired after she revealed on CNN that she accepted and used questions provided to her by the Biden campaign for the interview.
Lawful-Sanders, who was a host on WURD Radio, said during her interview with Victor Blackwell on his Saturday morning show that she was offered eight questions by the campaign to ask Biden, of which she asked four of them.
Blackwell noted on the air in response: “If the White House is trying to prove the vim, vigor, and acuity of the president, I don’t know how they do that by sending questions first before the interview and the president knows what is coming.”
Within minutes after the segment ran, the reactions from reporters, as well as supporters hoping to halt the bad optics of her admission, were on social media, weighing on how bad this looked for both the White House and journalism.
Lawful-Sanders was fired from her job the next day.
Of course the radio station was quick to push back. She wasn't fired!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...
In a post online on Sunday, Lomax said “Ms. Lawful-Sanders and WURD Radio have mutually agreed to part ways, effective immediately.”
“Andrea resigned,” Lomax said on air Monday, clearing up misinterpretations of the statement. “On her own volition. She was not fired. She chose to resign, and we accepted her resignation.”
Ahh, the 'ol Quit Or We Fire You tactic.
It gets better. WURD threw the White House under the bus:
According to Lomax, all interviews involving the White House are required to go through the station’s general manager, Ashanti Martin. But Biden’s team “intentionally bypassed” and “leapfrogged” over the station’s system by going directly to the host, Lomax said.
“The time turnaround is so frantic in those situations,” Lomax said. “I think there was just a lot of chaos happening around the interview, and so it’s really important to just understand that the Biden White House and the campaign, they tried to do a fast one basically and eliminate and overstep what the established understood protocol would be, and that’s what really I think just created a lot of turmoil.”
Talk about the rule of holes. You wanted the interview, knew the process was being bypassed, did the interview, then fired the host for making your station look bad when you knew it was weird going in. Good luck with that!