NEW: Fox & Friends Shared Scripts With EPA Chief Scott Pruitt, Report Finds
Fox & Friends shared scripts with former EPA chief Scott Pruitt before interviews, emails reported by the Daily Beast revealed, in a highly unusual practice that flies in the face of journalistic standards.
Pruitt — who left the Trump administration in July amid a comical raft of ethics investigations — regularly appeared on Fox News for softball interviews during his tenure. The Daily Beast found, thanks to an FOIA request, that his team chose the topics for those interviews, knew the questions and even reviewed the scripts in advance.
Fox News said in a statement, “This is not standard practice whatsoever and the matter is being addressed internally with those involved.”
“In multiple interviews on Fox & Friends, Pruitt was essentially allowed to dictate the terms for the interview and avoid any difficult questions,” the Beast’s Max Tani reported.
In one email chain from May 2017, a Pruitt spokesperson reached out to Fox & Friends producer Andrew Murray, who copied producer Diana Aloi, who said she would send over “pre-interview questions on the agreed upon topic, the new direction of the EPA, and helping communities that were poorly served by the last administration.”
Aloi went so far as to send over the script for the interview’s opener for approval. Per the Beast:
“Would this be okay as the setup to his segment?” producer Diana Aloi asked.
She wrote:
“There’s a new direction at the Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump—and it includes a back-to-basics approach. This after the Obama administration left behind a huge mess more than 1,300 super-fund sites which are heavily contaminated—still require clean-ups. So why was President Obama touted as an environmental savior if all these problems still exist?”
The EPA comms shop was pleased.
“Yes — perfect,” Graham replied.
In the interview the next day, Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade read the script as approved.
The Beast’s report also paints the picture of an EPA administrator obsessed with media coverage: his team is particularly pre-occupied with getting Pruitt on Sean Hannity‘s show. And despite the offer of a private jet flight, the top-rated host in cable news passed on an interview with the EPA head. Read the report here.
