Keep these tips top-of-mind today and in the week(s) ahead. This Weekly Training Digest is all about covering elections. Email not displaying correctly?
View it in your browser ([link removed]) .
[link removed]

Voting ends tonight in the U.S. midterms. Here are a few tips from Poynter senior faculty Al Tompkins ([link removed]) for covering a historic election:

🔎 Provide attribution, seek context and avoid subjective adjectives.
📸 Recognize the power of your images and video. When you show long lines, explain why those lines are long. Explain that people in line will be allowed to vote, at whatever hour that might be. Is this a method of voter suppression or is it an expression of interest in this election?
On Election Day, it is more useful to put your emphasis on voter rights and on why people are willing to wait than on the actual wait times. Make sure you encourage — not discourage — voting with the images and interviews you choose.
🗓️ Know when to expect winners to be called (http://) in different races. In the 2020 primaries, 23 states took an average of four days to report nearly complete results.
❌ Refute premature claims of victory. There is a psychological effect called “the cognitive bias of primacy” that explains why we tend to remember the first thing we hear more than what we hear later — even if what we hear later is more solid information.
If a candidate who first claims victory later loses the race, the public may find it more difficult to believe than if nobody claimed premature victory. If somebody claims a victory not backed up by data, then front-load the sentence when reporting on it with something like, “There is not enough data to support any candidate claiming victory, but Candidate X is making the claim anyway,” rather than reporting, “Candidate X is claiming victory even though the votes are still being counted.”
May the facts be with you. Go out and be excellent.
ELECTION FACT CHECKS

Our colleagues at PolitiFact ([link removed]) provide key context on election issues and candidates' claims. Here's what you need to know:
✅ No ([link removed]) , every vote wasn’t previously counted on election night until a few years ago.
✅ QAnon ideas ([link removed]) proliferate in 2022 midterms, raising continued concerns of violence.
✅ Fact-checking Joe Biden’s final midterm rallies ([link removed]) in Pennsylvania, New York, Florida.
✅ ([link removed]) Fact-checking Trump’s Miami rally ([link removed]) with Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.
[link removed]
Love these resources? Help keep them coming. ([link removed])
GIVE NOW ([link removed])

ADVERTISE ([link removed]) // DONATE ([link removed]) // LEARN ([link removed]) // JOBS ([link removed])
Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here. ([link removed])
[link removed] [link removed] [link removed] [link removed] mailto:[email protected]?subject=Feedback%20for%20Poynter
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
© All rights reserved Poynter Institute 2022
801 Third Street South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
If you don't want to receive email updates from Poynter, we understand.
You can change your subscription preferences ([link removed]) or unsubscribe from all Poynter emails ([link removed]) .