Did Donald Trump — or ABC News — choose who would interview the president? Why does it matter?

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer NEW YORK AP During a contentious exchange about deportations in his interview with ABC News Terry Moran this week President Donald Trump brought up from his perspective how Moran had gotten into the White House in the first place They re giving you the break of a lifetime you know Trump revealed in Tuesday s prime-time broadcast You re doing the interview I picked you because frankly I never heard of you but that s OK Emphasizing again that it was his choice that Moran was there the president scolded You re not being very nice From an ethics perspective it s considered a breach for a news organization to let a newsmaker dictate who will conduct an interview In the real world of competitive journalism things aren t constantly so simple Did ABC News let President Trump decide who would do the interview We don t know ABC on Thursday would not talk publicly about what arrangements were discussed after Trump agreed to speak to the framework about the first days of his administration ABC privately pushes back against the notion that Trump was given a list of possible interviewers but it s unclear whether other names came up On its face Moran would seem an unexpected choice At he s been with the architecture since and was chief White House correspondent during George W Bush s first term He had nine one-on-one interviews with Barack Obama But his profile at ABC News has diminished He s an anchor for the ABC News Live streaming system and covers the Supreme Court for the organization Related Articles Army plans for a probable parade on Trump s birthday call for soldiers AP learns Hegseth orders Army to cut costs by merging particular commands and slashing jobs Trump says it s Biden s business activity but businesses and economists beg to differ Trump administration asks Supreme Court to strip legal protections from Venezuelan foreigners Arrest of Tufts novice a clear violation her rights advocacy groups say There would seem to be more obvious alternatives like World News Tonight anchor David Muir effectively the face of the news division Mary Bruce is the current chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl has written three books about Trump and rotates as a host of the This Week Sunday show with Martha Raddatz Only George Stephanopoulos would seem off the table since Trump sued him for defamation in a incident settled last December Why would a news organization not want to cede the choice of an interviewer to the president It undermines our independence as journalists reported Kelly McBride a media ethics expert and senior vice president at the Poynter Institute When we make decisions of what questions are going to be sought who s doing the interview and how we edit the interview we do it in facility to the audience If we let the powerful person that we are attempting to get information from choose who does the interview or select the questions we re latest our promise to the audience that we would be acting on their behalf she disclosed The power of a president Practically speaking however a president has a great deal of power in these dynamics Whatever the well-established challenges inherent in interviewing Trump news organizations prize an sole interview with the president any president At any given moment his press office likely has multiple requests for interviews usually with a specific journalist s name attached He already has choices The Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to wield more control over who questions the president Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has invited new mostly friendly journalists into the White House briefing room and talked about further changes in who is allowed there The administration sparked a court fight with The Associated Press over access to the Oval Office When he worked as a news executive at CNN and NBC News Mark Whitaker declared he would discuss interviews with the White House involving certain journalists but the idea of giving a choice is not something I ever saw he declared Andrew Heyward a former CBS News president reported he understands the principle of not ceding the decision of who asks the questions but as a practical matter it s often a negotiation Heyward stressed he had no inside information about what happened with ABC News this week The Wild West days of competition for celebrity interviews In selected cases the importance of landing an interview ahead of a competitor can take precedence over the principle of controlling who does the asking Its value is illustrated in the ratings nearly million people watched Moran s interview with Trump on Tuesday the largest audience of anything on television that night the Nielsen company revealed There was even more at stake during the Wild West days of television networks competing for big celebrity interviews primarily at the end of the last century Shamefully the interviewee was in the driver s seat whenever it came to the flavor-of-the-week or the the greater part sought-after new interview reported veteran broadcast journalist Connie Chung It was one of the reasons why I despised getting the so-called get It was a matter of who could grovel better On a great number of of those occasions news organizations didn t consistently speak with one voice Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters often competed fiercely for the same interviews when they both worked at ABC News In Chung recalled that Walters was designated by ABC to interview scandal-scarred U S Rep Gary Condit but the congressman s representative disclosed they were going to another architecture unless Chung did the story Chung got the interview So what if the day s big celebrity is the president of the United States It is a bit of a gray area Heyward noted David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP Follow him at http x com dbauder and https bsky app profile dbauder bsky social