[VIRTUAL] Misinformation and the Election in Pennsylvania: A #WhatToExpect2020 Town Hall

Join PEN America, Committee of Seventy, WHYY, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Reading Eagle for a live town hall with trusted journalists and community organizers in conversation about what voters in Pennsylvania can expect from the upcoming November election. With misinformation being a constant threat, Pennsylvania communities are relying on local and community news organizations, as well as voting rights advocates, to receive the most up-to-date and accurate election information. Join us to meet some of the journalists and community organizers doing this important work. If you plan to tweet about the event, follow us on Twitter at @penamerica and use the hashtag #WhatToExpect2020.

This virtual conversation is free and open to the public. We encourage community members to come prepared to ask journalists and election experts any questions about voting in the upcoming election in Pennsylvania.

Please confirm your registration at the Zoom link below. For more information, contact Grace Linczer, Civic Engagement Consultant, at [email protected].

REGISTER HERE

Panelists

Ashley Session is the director of civic engagement and partnerships at Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan civic leadership organization that advances representative, ethical, and effective government in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania through citizen engagement and public policy advocacy.

Adam Richter is a digital news editor and columnist for the Reading Eagle in Reading, Pennsylvania. A professional journalist for more than 15 years, Adam often writes about the intersection of technology, news and society. He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and political science from the University of Pittsburgh. Adam grew up in Berks County, where he currently lives with his wife, daughter and dog.

Jonathan Lai is a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer where he focuses on voting and elections and uses data to explore those topics, including voting rights, gerrymandering, election security, demographics, voting patterns, and campaign finance.

The panel will be moderated by Susan Phillips from WHYY. Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people’s every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004 covering politics including the 2008 Presidential primary. In 2010 she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania’s natural gas rush called “The Shale Game.” She received a 2013 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow.

This event is part of PEN America’s #WhatToExpect2020 initiative, which we launched this fall to empower voters to understand the uniqueness of the 2020 election, inoculate the public from the threats of disinformation, and build awareness of the electoral process.