J298 Democracy’s Deadline: Journalism and the Midterm Elections

Democracy’s Deadline:
Journalism, Trump and the Midterm Elections

In this its two hundred fiftieth year, American democracy is being tested as never before. At the end of the first Trump Administration the country suffered a coup d’etat. Now, halfway through the second, the fate of electoral democracy itself is very much in question. Will ICE agents be stationed at the polls, as Administration officials have threatened? Will the Federal government otherwise intervene in the vote? What effect will the unprecedented mid-decade redistricting in multiple states have on the nationwide results? Or will the midterm vote, if it looks to result in widespread losses for the governing party — as it now does — come off at all?

We won’t know the answers to these and many other questions until November. But we know already that these may be the most consequential midterm elections in American history. It is not an exaggeration to say that the survival of democracy itself in the United States is at stake. In this seminar we will direct our unblinking eyes to the run up to the midterms and to their immediate aftermath. We will follow both individual campaigns and the general contest and we will also examine national and local coverage in the print and broadcast press. Our goal? To look deeply at this vital moment in the history of our Republic — and that of our profession as well.