New Jersey Governor Backs Out of Live Call-In Show

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy withdrew from a fledgling public radio call-in show two hours before its scheduled broadcast Thursday evening because of a disagreement over the show's format. His spokesman later indicated that the governor has no intention of returning for the next episode.

The disagreement arose because the three public radio stations producing the show — WNYC, WBGO in Newark and WHYY in Philadelphia — had planned to include a segment in which a guest reporter, Politico's Linh Tat, would ask some of the questions. The governor's spokesman, Dan Bryan, told the general manager at one of the stations that the governor would cancel unless the reporter was removed from the line-up, according to WNYC's Nancy Solomon, the host of the show. Tat had been invited to join the show for a segment on school funding.

"So we quickly huddled and decided that we could not allow them to call those kinds of shots," Solomon said.

In a tweet, Bryan said the disagreement had nothing to do with the Politico reporter, whom "they respected tremendously," but that the governor's office wanted to devote the full hour to questions from the public.

This had nothing to do with @Linh_Tat who we respect tremendously. This was about a difference of vision, one we communicated clearly: Ask the Gov is about taking an hr of unmediated calls, etc from public, not press ?s. https://t.co/PxTq6hrDi4

— Daniel Bryan (@danieljohnbryan) May 24, 2018

In a joint statement, the three radio stations said "editorial independence is critical to our mission and the success of such a program. We regret the inconvenience to our listeners."

Our 8 p.m. program, Ask Governor Murphy, has been cancelled. On Point (AM 820) and Studio 360 (93.9 FM) will air instead. pic.twitter.com/aXvv4HTFeY

— WNYC 🎙 (@WNYC) May 24, 2018

The first installment of "Ask Governor Murphy" two months ago also featured questions from a guest journalist — Star-Ledger politics reporter Matt Arco — as well as from Solomon. The public also tweeted and called in with questions.

Later in the evening, Bryan issued a statement to WNYC: “The purpose of ‘Ask Governor Murphy’ is for the governor to take unmediated calls directly from his constituents, rather than questions from political reporters. The station[s] disagreed, and we respectfully decided to move forward with the program elsewhere."

UPDATED: This story was been updated at 11:45 p.m., May 24, 2018, to include a subsequent statement from the governor's spokesman.