In January, 123rd State Assemblymember Donna Lupardo announced that she would not be seeking reelection this year. The district includes the city of Binghamton, the village of Endicott and the towns of Vestal and Union.
WSKG News Director Phoebe Taylor-Vuolo and Binghamton-area reporter Celia Clarke sat down together to talk about the election.
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Phoebe Taylor-Vuolo: We’ve barely started the reporting, and there are already things that made us want to give you some insight about how we cover elections, for transparency’s sake. WSKG’s Binghamton area reporter Celia Clarke is covering the race.
So Celia, first of all, just give me a quick recap of the race.
Celia Clarke: So, it’s a big deal that Lupardo’s leaving the assembly after 22 years, practically a generation. So far, there are three candidates going for her seat. Dan Livingston and Dan Norton are vying for the Democratic nomination. Republican Lynn Parker is running uncontested for his party's and the Conservative party nominations, and Heather Micha announced as a Republican, but now she’s trying to get on the ballot as an independent.
Nick Libous was in the race but recently ended his campaign before it really got started. He’s now backing another candidate.
PTV: So, something we talk a lot about is journalistic ethics and avoiding any conflicts of interest in our reporting. Basically, a conflict of interest is when a reporter or newsroom has ties—personal, financial, or otherwise—that either interfere or appear to interfere with their ability to report in an objective, unbiased way. So in the case of the 123rd Assembly race, we realized pretty early on we had an ethical situation to navigate.
And that's because one of the Democratic candidates, Dan Norton, was on the WSKG board of trustees. And the law firm he works for, Hinman, Howard and Kattell, is also a WSKG underwriter. So normally, we always make a disclosure about stuff like this with a sentence or two in the broadcast story and our web articles. And we’ll keep doing that.
Norton actually resigned from the WSKG board as we were putting this piece together. But overall, we thought we needed to give you, our listeners, more of an explanation.
CC: And to be honest, it was a situation that, as the reporter covering the race, made me really, really uncomfortable. Even though we have this thing, a concept called a “firewall” at WSKG. It’s between the newsroom and the board, and between us and the people who get the station’s business sponsorships. We don’t communicate with board members, occasionally they might contact us. They absolutely are not supposed to ever tell us what to report about or how to report something. Those decisions about what we cover are made in the newsroom.
And just among ourselves, we talk to each other if we think we have a conflict or appearance of conflict with a specific story or issue.
PTV: Yeah, I’ve seen editors and reporters recuse themselves completely from covering certain elections because they have a connection with a candidate.
CC: And what this means, this firewall, is that until he announced he was running for office, I didn’t know who Dan Norton was or that he was one of our board members. And honestly, I don’t know who all our board members are.
But despite all that—our ethics, the firewall—the whole situation created an appearance of a conflict of interest. And that was giving us agita. Or giving me agita. So, as part of a story I’m working on about the race, I asked about this particular situation. Turns out, Norton actually offered to resign early on. But, I found out that there’s no board policy to prevent someone from being on the board while they’re running for a political office.
PTV: So let’s talk a little bit about what we do to ensure we’re giving fair coverage to all candidates. Like, we make sure that we give all candidates equal access. That means if we’re working on a story about a race, we reach out to each official candidate and give them the same opportunity for an on-air interview or to comment. If they offer statements, we include them.
CC: It can get pretty granular. Like, in a recent edit session, for a piece about the sheriff’s race, we actually spent time worrying over how many seconds each candidate's quote was.
PTV: Yeah, and another thing is how we decide when to start covering a race. Talk to me a little about that, Celia.
CC: For me, candidates’ timelines are not coverage timelines, they're not the same thing. Some of them will start doing public events a year before the election. That’s just too far out.
I like to start focusing when people officially declare they are running. But if an incumbent announces they won’t be running for re-election, that’s news.
I generally think of elections in three or four phases: when people are declaring, who actually gets on the ballot, the primary campaigning and then the general election campaign.
And the last thing is, I think about voters’ tolerance levels, because I’m a voter, too. So, how long before a primary do I really want to be hearing about elections? I think about that, because voters might not be paying attention a year or even six months out. And just to be really honest, I know what’s happening in the 123rd assembly race, but I live in a different district and I couldn’t tell you who’s running right now.
PTV: Yeah, and it’s always a discussion in the newsroom, an ongoing discussion in the newsroom. We meet in advance and talk through who’s covering what race and when to start reporting what. And then we reevaluate as the election year goes on.
CC: Right. Like when write-in candidates pop up.
PTV: Exactly.
CC: I hope this gives everyone a better understanding of how we approach political reporting, especially this election year. We’re a really small newsroom so we can’t cover everything that's happening but our reporting is thoughtful and fact-based so you know what your choices are.
PTV: Well, it’s almost two months from the primary and we’re still a long way to November. So we have a lot more reporting to come. As always, if you have questions, thoughts, tip, please reach out. You can find us at news@wskg.org.
