FOX AND EPA TOO ‘FRIENDLY’
Producers’ chummy ties with ex-agency boss
The friends at Fox News were a bit too cordial with Scott Pruitt.
The conservative news network disciplined several “Fox & Friends” producers Tuesday after previously undisclosed emails revealed they had allowed the former Environmental Protection Agency czar to preapprove interview scripts before going on-air — a practice that’s widely frowned upon in media circles.
The emails, which were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the Sierra Club and first reported by The Daily Beast, lay out an ethically dubious pattern of communication between Pruitt’s deputies and producers of the unabashedly proTrump morning show.
In one email chain from May 2017, Pruitt’s press secretary Amy Graham pitched “Fox & Friends” producer Andrew Murray about an interview on the climate changedenying EPA chief’s supposed interest in helping communities that were “poorly served” by the Obama administration.
Murray agreed to bring Pruitt on the next show and looped in fellow producer Diana Aloi, who promised to check back in with “preinterview questions on the agreedupon topic, the new direction of the EPA, and helping communities that were poorly served by the last administration.” Aloi subsequently asked for “talking points,” and Graham sent over some. Once she was done writing the segment, Aloi reached back out. “Would this be OK as the setup to his segment?” Aloi asked and attached the following:
“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 Superfund sites which are heavily contaminated—still require cleanups. So why was President Obama touted as an environmental savior if all these problems still exist?”
Pleased with the fawning opening monologue, Graham wrote back, “Yes — perfect.”
Ahead of another interview with Pruitt in April of this year, a “Fox & Friends” producer sent an email to the EPA press shop with three topics it wanted to cover. The following morning, six of the eight questions asked of Pruitt related to the preapproved topics. One of the two other questions related to a topic the EPA press staff had successfully pitched to the Trump-friendly Fox Business Network the previous day.
Similarly amicable exchanges occurred on at least one other occasion before Pruitt resigned amid ethical scandals in July.
A Fox News spokeswoman said several employees have been disciplined, but wouldn’t identify them or say how they had been reprimanded.