Is the conversation really about the questions?

Have we lost the plot?

Over the last few days, a situation has played out in which a Black reporter, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, was fired from WURD in Philadelphia because of her interview with Joe Biden, where the campaign provided the questions in advance.

The interview was conducted on July 3, and since then, a salacious narrative of outrage unfolded about how “wrong” it was for the Biden campaign to offer the reporter questions and even more “wrong” for the reporter to actually use them.

Is it wrong for a campaign to give the questions to a reporter in advance of an interview? Absolutely not. It’s actually a common practice, and as consumers and voters, we need to know this.

Is it wrong for the reporter to use those questions? Also NO! That’s a good thing. It means the reporter is working for the American people and not themselves.

At face value, I realize this doesn’t make sense for those not in my field. Let me explain.

With a solid two decades of experience in public relations for high-profile individuals, including overlapping with individuals who work in the White House press office in other roles, I can confidently say that it is a common practice for a public relations team to provide a reporter with questions before an interview. I am often asked. The reporter doesn’t have to use those questions, but it is a common courtesy to provide them.

In order to explain, let’s take a step back here to fully understand what we are talking about and how far we have stepped away from the plot of understanding the role of journalism in this country—which includes holding elected officials accountable.

What is the purpose of the interview in the first place? The purpose of the interview is to give the people the best and most unfiltered interview with President Biden possible so they can decide on their vote.

Sometimes, the best way to do that is to directly ask the questions provided and address the critical topics without getting sidetracked by performative issues. People want to hear the President’s stance on the key issues and not be distracted by gossip or “gotcha” moments that will lead to a viral headline.

That’s not to say that you can’t hold the President accountable for what he says or speak truth to power as the interview goes on, even if you stick to the provided questions.

Many reporters like to take a more conversational approach, starting with the questions offered and seeing where the conversation leads, so it is less scripted.

Yet, providing the questions in advance benefits the station's audience, the voters, and the general public. Both the campaign PR representatives and the reporter are responsible for ensuring that the public gets the most accurate picture possible of what is happening and the points that the President wants to convey.

Sometimes, the reporters don’t take the questions offered. That’s fine as well. In fact, I had a journalist tell me, following an interview with a source on a controversial issue, that he had particularly asked tough questions to get the source riled up and more emotional so they could make a more passionate case.

At the end of the day, the reporter and President’s team all work for the people. Their primary duty is to the audience and not to each other. If they are not doing that, then we all missed the assignment. The absurd power struggle over who gets to pick the questions is irrelevant for many reasons. It’s the reporter making themselves and not the audience the focal point of the story. But it goes so much further than that.

I can see how the average person might see this question issue as a problem without some knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes. See if this background reframes the narrative when you know more about how things work and why they must work that way.

Anyone trained to do media interviews, including our President, for very good reason, follows one basic premise: The questions don’t matter.

When training people for media interviews or debates, I often find that the layperson, especially a good student, thinks that a successful interview is about answering all the questions correctly.

Elected officials are trained that if you only answer the questions in the interview, you fail the test. The test was if you could relate to the public or not.

You didn’t come to simply answer the questions. You came to communicate your message and relate to your audience.

We teach people tactics to do that, no matter what the question is, we bring them back to the central message. The reporter may never ask the most critical question that the audience wants to hear about, so it is your job to lead them to it. Whether the reporter uses the questions or not, a trained elected official will lead them back to it. The person who ultimately benefits from this practice is THE VOTER.

Neither the President nor anyone trained will be swayed or caught off guard by questions that don’t fit their agenda. That’s simply a fairy tale portrait view of how this works. They are prepared for any question possible. That’s the job. It’s done to protect everyone involved, but mainly, it’s done to give the voters the best information possible.

Not one person should be under the impression that any reporter is asking questions a President has not been prepared to answer. How would that even work logically? That should be your baseline for evaluating interviews as a consumer and voter. That’s what makes Joe Biden’s poor debate performance in June so terrible. You need to judge the performance based on this guidance.

We also teach people that journalists don’t matter. When a person in power gives an interview, they are not speaking to the journalist. They are speaking to the audience. That’s why I advise people to do interviews with politically misaligned personalities who don’t agree with them. You are not talking to the journalist. You are talking to the American people.

That practice exists to help the people and to prevent public officials from being misrepresented by journalists seeking to make salacious headlines rather than providing the American people with news.

This re-ignited the conversation in my mind about the fury behind how Donna Brazile had “leaked” debate questions to Hillary Clinton. This was an outrageous distraction from what was really going on when you know everything about how debates really work. There are so many issues that were happening. This was not one of them.

Any basic, generic run-of-the-mill public relations person, let alone the top in the country preparing the President, is able to predict the questions in advance of a debate for practice. There is a zero percent chance that the President at a debate or media interview is answering questions that never once occurred to them or had not been already practiced dozens of times. We practice the hard questions too.

With any bit of logic in that situation, how can the questions make a difference?

Is anyone under the impression or living out the fantasy that a reporter or debate moderator is going to ask a completely unique “gotcha” question that a Presidential candidate has not already practiced thousands of times over again? Even the Comedy Central Daily Show had a punchline skit about preparing for the debates.

WURD overstepped their role in firing this reporter. They made this about the reporter’s and the station’s self-importance rather than the American public, particularly Black voters in a swing state who listen to that station to be able to hear from the President.

Key Takeaway: The questions don’t matter. Reporters are not teachers and are not giving a test. All of these people work for you as the audience. They all have a duty to work together to give you the best picture of what is really happening. The people need to feel seen during the interview and not be distracted by a host’s salacious agenda or public relations. We need to get back to the real issues and not drama and egos from a press that seems to be making themselves the story way too much lately.