News consumers should be aware that a left-leaning group is targeting “local journalists” in battleground states with talking points on how to cover elections. In Pennsylvania, Democrat operatives coached reporters to be suspicious of “Republican activists” and elected officials who may raise legitimate concerns about how elections are run in this country.
Last week, the left-leaning nonprofit Knight Foundation hosted an “Election Law Forum” for Pennsylvania journalists as part of a virtual series promising to “equip journalists with essential, nonpartisan, fact-based knowledge on election law to better inform their communities in the lead-up to the 2024 elections and beyond,” according to an invitation. The forum was presented in partnership with the American Bar Association’s Task Force for American Democracy and Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law.
It seemed obvious the Pennsylvania training would take a left-leaning slant just from a look at the speaker list. The training included panelists former U.S. Representative Conor Lamb, a Democrat and a multiple-time political guest on MSNBC; Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat who was Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State in 2020; and Eric Kraeutler, a recently retired intellectual property litigator, according to his bio, and the current chair of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia nonprofit that has “recently … pursued election and campaign reform policies that align with Democratic priorities,” according to InfluenceWatch. The session was facilitated by moderators Tracie Potts, of the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College, and Katie Meyer of Spotlight PA, a digital news outlet funded in part by the Knight
