About that Editorial Board interview with Cal Cunningham

After an unedited video of our Editorial Board endorsement interview with U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham was published online in error, the Washington Examiner posted a news story Thursday evening detailing a recorded exchange between Cunningham’s communications director and a News & Observer reporter.

The Examiner story noted that the Cunningham campaign was unhappy that the candidate was questioned about a Durham housing project during the Editorial Board interview.

That’s true.

Minutes later, the Thom Tillis campaign sent out a lengthy email asserting that the story showed that the Editorial Board and McClatchy newspapers were colluding with the Cunningham campaign to hide the questions reporter Dan Kane asked.

That’s not true. Here’s what happened:

The Editorial Board is interviewing candidates in advance of making endorsements for the Nov. 3 election. Interviews from the U.S. Senate race, the N.C. governor’s race and N.C. Council of State races are being held in Zoom meetings, which we are recording. We’re publishing videos of those interviews as we publish our endorsements.

Although our board’s deliberations on the races are separate from our news coverage, we invite news reporters to sit in on candidate interviews and ask questions at the end, if they choose. Those questions are for news-gathering purposes, not the board’s endorsement process. Because News and Opinion are separate and because the reporters’ questions may be part of their reporting on future stories, we edit the reporter’s questions and responses out of the video. It would be unfair to reporters to tip off others about the stories they’re working on. The reporters can, however, use video of their questions from the endorsement interview with their future stories.

In the Cunningham interview, Kane had questions about Cunningham’s work as a lawyer for Southern Durham Development and its 751 South Development in Durham. As the Examiner reported, Cunningham’s communication director Rachel Petri protested. I said that I wasn’t going to pre-judge questions from reporters and allowed Kane to continue.

After Kane asked Cunningham more questions, the editorial board interview continued and concluded. We edited Kane’s questions and Cunningham’s responses out of the video, and Kane now will be able to use those answers and video for his reporting.

The unedited version of the Cunningham video — including Kane’s questions — was published online in error yesterday. That video has been unpublished, and we’ll republish the edited version when we make our recommendation in the U.S. Senate race.

If we were out to protect Cal Cunningham, as Tillis alleges, we wouldn’t have allowed Kane to ask the candidate hard questions about the 751 South Development in Durham. If we were out to cover up details, we certainly wouldn’t have allowed those questions to continue. Instead, Cunningham answered Kane, who is now continuing his reporting. He has video clips he can use, if he chooses.

Tillis, on the other hand, has dodged our questions. Despite two invitations, he has not set up an interview with the board.

This story was originally published October 1, 2020 at 8:29 PM.