While attending the 2016 Presidential Debate at Hofstra University, we were able to attend a media panel with journalists from Newsday and Sirius XM. The panelists offered their opinions and predictions on the election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to the students.

Some opinions made were that in the 2016 election Bernie Sanders would not have been as successful as he was were he not running against a female candidate. This opinion was made by the panelist from Sirius XM Radio who also offered his opinion that Hillary did not seem that personable to the public, and he stated that in order for Clinton to be successful in that night’s debate she needed to appeal to people’s emotions and be more relatable to the public. Another opinion that one of the panelists offered was that they did not know which Trump would show up to the debate that night: whether it be a calm, cool, and collected Trump, or an unprepared and unprofessional Trump.

During the panel, references were made to the 2012 debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and the panelists commented on the differences between the 2012 election and the 2016 election. One panelist from Newsday mentioned how in the 2012 debates, Republican candidate Romney made a comment about “binders full of women” and how this one comment had such a negative impact on his campaign.

This contrasts the 2016 election since Hillary Clinton has been involved in numerous scandals, including her infamous email scandal, and Donald Trump has been notoriously known for making racist or sexist comments, but it seems that these comments and scandals did not have as big of an effect on Clinton or Trump’s campaign as it did on Romney’s.

As a student, it was a new experience being able to listen to these journalists and see their views on the election firsthand because students are usually only exposed to politics through their family’s views or what is taught in school. It was also interesting to get an insight into what it is like to be a journalist, for example the panelists were discussing how after the debate they only had thirty minutes to write an editorial on what happened at the debate.

Towards the end of the panel, the panelists allowed the students attending to ask questions. It was interesting being able to see the students offer their opinions to the panelists and listen to the panelists offer their opinions back to the students. Overall, the panel offered good insight into the world of journalism and was a very rewarding experience.