Biden Will Not Sit For Pre-Super Bowl Interview With Fox—Breaking Tradition
Fox Soul #FoxSoul
Topline
President Joe Biden will not sit down for an interview with Fox before the network airs the Super Bowl on Sunday, in a rare break from a recent tradition as both the White House and Fox Corporation–which owns the conservative cable network Fox News, a regular critic of Biden–appear to blame each other for the cancellation.
Variety first reported Friday the White House backed out of an interview with one of Fox News’ non-opinion anchors that an executive said would be “no strings attached,” but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted minutes later that Fox Corp—the parent company of both Fox News and the Fox broadcast network, which is airing the Super Bowl—had called off an interview with the president.
Jean-Pierre said Biden was planning for an interview to “discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans” with Fox Soul—Fox Corporation’s streaming service tailored to African-American audiences.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the Fox Soul interview would have also served as the pre-Super Bowl interview, though CNN reported the White House was pushing for an interview with Fox Soul as a workaround that wouldn’t have required Biden to sit down with a Fox News anchor.
The only other recent time a president canceled a pre-Super Bowl interview was in 2018, when former President Donald Trump refused to sit down with NBC amid ongoing feuds with the network’s coverage of his administration and the NFL for allowing players to kneel during the national anthem to protest police violence against Black Americans.
Neither the White House press office nor Fox Corporation immediately responded to requests for comment from Forbes.
Surprising Fact
Biden has not sat for an interview with Fox since taking office in January 2021. The network and the administration have regularly tussled, with Fox News’ conservative opinion hosts excoriating Biden while Fox News’ White House reporter Peter Doocy often spars with Jean-Pierre during press briefings.
Key Background
The presidential pre-game interview is a fairly new tradition, beginning when former President George W. Bush appeared with CBS’ Jim Nantz in 2004 and only taking place consistently since former President Barack Obama assumed office in 2009. Interview formats have differed over the years, with some live and some pre-recorded, though they are typically cordial and involve soft questions about the Super Bowl along with questions about pressing political issues. Both CBS and NBC have relied on a mix of nightly news anchors and morning show hosts to carry out presidential Super Bowl interviews, while Fox—which rotates broadcasting duties with the other two networks—has instead pulled from its lineup of highly partisan conservative cable show hosts, which has led to tensions at times. Obama twice sat down for an interview with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly—once in 2011 and again in 2014—which were mostly innocuous but not without contentious moments. Perhaps the most memorable exchange came in the 2014 sit-down, when Obama told O’Reilly he was misleading viewers by suggesting the White House was not transparent about the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
What We Don’t Know
It’s not clear who Fox was planning to select to interview Biden.
Big Number
21.6 million. That’s how many viewers tuned in to the pre-game show the last time the Super Bowl aired on Fox. The Super Bowl is by far the most viewed broadcast annually in the United States.
Further Reading
White House Nixes Super Bowl Interview With Fox News (Variety)
White House says Biden’s Super Bowl interview with Fox is off (CNN)