When Rep. Duncan D. Hunter on Monday wanted to make it known he would plead guilty in the federal campaign finance case against him, he turned to a friendly local news station to deliver a heavily curated message.

The Alpine Republican appeared on KUSI, a station where he had been interviewed many times at the anchor desk. For this appearance, he sat in a leather chair by a potted plant.

The appearance was framed as an “interview,” although the questions being asked were all suggested by Hunter’s team.

KUSI’s broadcasters themselves disclosed the arrangement while leading into the segment saying, Hunter had “agreed to an exclusive interview with KUSI on the condition that we agreed to a series of questions.”


Even though the station disclosed that the interview subject had provided the questions, the situation represented a departure from typical journalism practices, according to journalism professors and experts in media ethics.

Steven Cohen, news director for KUSI, declined to answer questions about the Hunter interview Thursday, but said, “We stand by the interview and made it universally available to anyone who wanted to view it.”

“This is highly unethical and inappropriate,” said Samuel Freedman, a professor of journalism at Columbia University in New York. “He is a public official who is answerable to the public through the media, and having an agreed upon list of questions for getting an interview is unacceptable.... It is the kind of thing we’d expect of glossy magazine interviews with TV or movie stars, and even then it is problematic.”

Freedman added that while interview subjects regularly may ask what general questions will be asked or request that certain general parameters are set for an interview, allowing a subject to write the questions and set preemptive limits on questioning damages the public good and doesn’t give the public the candid answers they deserve.


“It goes to the broader question of does the organization see itself as a news organization or a political advocacy organization with the trappings of a news station?” Freedman said.

The station’s owners, the McKinnon family, are well known GOP donors and supporters.

Arthur Santana, a journalism professor at San Diego State University, said because KUSI disclosed the conditions, he wouldn’t necessarily call it “unethical” but the situation was an unusual journalism practice and did a disservice to news viewers and readers. He also said KUSI would have been better served to remind readers throughout the segment or after it about the terms of the questioning.

“The main goal of a reporter is transparency and when you have this sort of set up it seems disingenuous and provides a false backdrop to the news viewer,” Santana said. “Hunter is providing a statement to the news media but couching it as an interview. It makes him look like he is being held to account by a reporter.”


When other reporters approached Hunter after he entered his guilty plea in federal court on Tuesday, he recommended they watch the segment.

Michael Harrison, a spokesman for Hunter, said he reached out to KUSI for Hunter to make the announcement because of a long-standing relationship with the station. Harrison praised KUSI as the “gold standard for journalistic integrity.”

Harrison also characterized the exchange as “suggesting” questions to KUSI, not “dictating” them, and said he had never taken that approach with KUSI or another news outlet previously. This time Hunter had a specific message and wasn’t going to deviate much from it.

“Congressman Hunter had a specific statement that he wanted make,” Harrison said. “I did not know if we would have use of a teleprompter, so for him to be able to flow through, I broke it up into the four questions covering the areas he covered in the statement.”


The four questions Hunter was asked were:

“This is a major development in your case. Why the plea?”

“What’s going to happen to the seat?”

“What is it that people should know about this new development?”

“What’s next?”

Journalism professors like Freedman and Santana said the issue was not that Harrison made the request or attempted to suggest questions. He is after all a public relations person. But KUSI and its reporter abdicated their responsibility as a reporter in complying, they said.

“There is no problem with a public figure attempting to control their own message. That happens everyday,” Freedman said. “The problem is when an organization, instead of pushing back, contrives to be a part of it. You are a news organization, not a co-producer.”

In an email to the Times of San Diego Cohen, KUSI’s news director, gave a lengthy response to those who criticized the ethics of the Hunter interview.


“I thought the congressman was deserving of a safe haven for an interview, where he could cogently and without the extraneous pressure of the mob say his piece,” Cohen told them. “And there was no scenario I could construct that would have altered his message/therefore I agreed to a series of obvious questions. To call it PR is so much professorial delusion, and competitive balderdash.”