Panel to Examine News Media’s Coverage of 2016 Presidential Election

The news media’s coverage of the 2016 presidential election is the focus of a public panel discussion Tuesday at the University of Kentucky, sponsored by the UK student chapter and the Bluegrass chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

“The 2016 Presidential Election: What Did Journalists Get Right?” will feature veteran journalists, people with political experience and a researcher with political expertise.

The program will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Room 122 of the White Hall Classroom Building, next to the Patterson Office Tower. The university community and general public are invited. Parking is available in Parking Structure #5, between Limestone and Upper streets.

“Every presidential election brings new media strategies from the candidates and their party machinery,” said Mike Farrell, professor of journalism and co-advisor of the SPJ campus chapter. “And every campaign presents new challenges for journalists.”

The panelists will be journalism professor Al Cross, an election analyst for Kentucky Educational Television and a contributing columnist for The Courier-Journal, where he was political writer; David Hawpe, former  Kentucky Kernel editor, longtime reporter and editor of The Courier-Journal and now a UK trustee; Les Fugate, senior vice president for RunSwitch PR, who worked as an aide to former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson; and Lars Willnat, director of the UK School of Journalism and Media, whose research includes media effects on political attitudes, theoretical aspects of public opinion formation, and political effects of global communication.

Retired EKU journalism professor Liz Hansen, the president of the Bluegrass SPJ chapter, will moderate the discussion. Hawpe, Cross and Hansen are inductees of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.

The program is open to the public and the university community. The goal is to help make better sense of what happened on Election Day after a long, bitter campaign and to help journalists and the public better understand journalism’s role in the process.

“We’ve never seen a candidate with the media expertise of Donald Trump. He racked up untold millions of dollars of free coverage with his phone calls to political programs and his tweeting,” Farrell said. “At the same time, journalists were covering the first woman nominated for president by one of the major political parties, and she was being dogged by constant revelations from WikiLeaks.”

“We believe these are terrific panelists, and this should be an informative and fascinating discussion,” he said.