A study of Honolulu TV news coverage during last year’s election found that local TV stations did a subpar job of covering the most significant political campaigns last year. The University of Delaware study, which was detailed in this Civil Beat column, concluded that news stations in Hawaii permitted candidates and their campaigns to create and drive the agenda on political news coverage and that television news only explored basic campaign issues when they emerged via a debate or a press release. The coverage, in those cases, focused only on what the candidates said. “They did not cover any issue,” the report says. With this in mind, political cartoonist John Pritchett offered his take on Hawaii’s television news’ treatment of serious issues.

About the author: John Pritchett is a longtime award-winning political cartoonist. He has been penning artwork in Hawaii for decades, including 20 years at the Honolulu Weekly. Find more of his work on the web at pritchettcartoons.com.