Here’s an excellent question for news managers.

Let me do a bit of a setup here first.

Back in my News Director days, I never let anyone dictate how we covered a news story. In other words, I would not let that happen if a politician refused to talk to one of our station’s Reporters and wanted to be interviewed by a different reporter.

We would report the story, explain that the politician would not speak to our Reporter and that was that.

So, when I saw the story that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre requested not to be interviewed by Don Lemon as a condition of appearing on “CNN This Morning”, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

The big difference here is that Lemon is not a Journalist but an opinion host. So does Jean-Pierre, or any politician have a valid point in not wanting to talk to Lemon?

Donald Trump goes on Fox News and always speaks to their opinion hosts. But you don’t see Trump on CNN or MSNBC. Hell, you don’t see Trump sitting down with real Journalists at Fox News.

So, if you’re running CNN, and Karine Jean-Pierre refuses to appear on air if she talks has to talk to Lemon, do you let her on the air at all?

It’s a more challenging call when you are talking about the person conducting the interview is not a journalist.