FACULTY NEWS
'How did they just call that state for McCain with 0 percent of the precincts reporting?'

Photo by Mara Auster Elizabeth Skewes discusses campaign coverage as CNN delivers live projections

Dean Paul Voakes called it a "truly different twist on a book talk."

On Feb. 5 – Super Tuesday in the U.S. primary campaign season – Assistant Professor Elizabeth Skewes used live TV as the backdrop for her discussion about U.S. election coverage and her new book, "Message Control: How News is Made on the Presidential Campaign Trail."

The public was invited to campus, where Skewes talked about the new front-loaded primary system – which she calls "problematic" – as CNN projections of election results were projected on a large auditorium screen.

"It was interactive learning at its best, with Liz in control of the remote. She was particularly adept in answering the question, 'How did they just call that state for McCain with zero percent of the precincts reporting?' " Voakes said.

Skewes said it was fun to do the real-time analysis of the media coverage of the primaries. "We got to talk about how much air time CNN was filling with what the reporters thought they knew and what they thought the exit polls were telling them," she said. "And we got to talk about how little the media have learned from the 2000 election night and the bad calls.

"In fact, MSNBC (in April) called the Pennsylvania race with 7 percent of the vote in – 7 percent! What's the big rush? And the analysis was so focused on the exit polls, which really don't explain why people are making the choices that they're making," she said. The event was sponsored by the SJMC and CU chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Skewes is this year's recipient of the School's William Payden Award for Faculty Excellence. She taught a special-topics Media/Politics course in addition to Reporting 2 and Media Ethics in Professional Practice.