Fox News senior national correspondent John Roberts said Sunday a key Senate candidate won’t talk to him because he works for Fox News, and the candidate even demanded Roberts be dumped as moderator for a Senate debate. “Despite my long track record of having worked for Fox, CNN prior to that, and CBS News before that for 14 years, they didn’t like the idea that someone from Fox would be moderating that debate, so out I went,” Roberts said on the Fox program “Media Buzz.”
Roberts also told Howard Kurtz Georgia Democrat Michelle Nunn has denied him an interview for months. “For some reason, the Nunn campaign just does not want to talk to Fox News, even though we have been reaching out to them in various ways since about the month of April,” he said.
Update: The Atlanta Press Club pulled Roberts from the debate, they say, because of his Tweets about a lack of access to the Nunn campaign. “The Atlanta Press Club was concerned that sending the tweets so close to the debate may cause people to question whether Roberts would be an impartial moderator to all candidates,” says Lauri Straus of the APC.
Roberts has responded to the response:
“The Atlanta Press Club told me the Nunn campaign had complained about me being the moderator and wanted me removed. I had fully expected this to happen given the fact that the Nunn campaign had resisted every attempt at outreach we had made since April. Their press operation refused to put Fox News on any mailing lists for campaign news and candidate events.
The Press Club cited the fact that I had reported this lack of contact on my Twitter feed as ‘prior history’ with the candidate, concluding that the Nunn campaign might challenge my impartiality as a result. This could not be farther from the truth. Above all else, I strive for fairness in my reporting and would have ensured an absolutely fair and balanced debate between the candidates. The Nunn campaign has chosen to ignore the nation’s most popular cable news channel, one that reaches millions of voters in Georgia. That’s a decision they have made.”