Author Profile

Mitch Kokai

Mitch Kokai joined the John Locke Foundation as director of communications in December 2005 after spending more than four years as chief state government reporter for News 14 Carolina. That job included extensive coverage of the General Assembly and other topics for the 24-hour local television news channel based in Raleigh and Charlotte.

Before News 14 Carolina, Kokai worked as a radio news reporter for seven years. He started a radio news department at WENC-AM in Whiteville, then led Chapel Hill’s award-winning radio news team at WCHL-AM. He spent two-and-half years as news director and assignment editor for Raleigh’s WPTF-AM.

Mitch is a Columbus, Ohio, native. He earned highest honors and highest distinction from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He has lived in North Carolina since 1989.

Articles by Mitch Kokai

Mar 7, 2006 ·

Panelists at UNC event tell students free-press fight crucial to freedom

CHAPEL HILL — Journalists need to defend their First Amendment Rights in order to protect them, or “there’s not going to be a torch to pass to the next generation.” That’s the assessment of one of North Carolina’s leading free press advocates.

“I hope people don’t look back years from now and say, ‘Those guys were surrounded, and they all went down,’” First Amendment lawyer John Bussian said during a free press forum in Chapel Hill on March 6. The event was organized by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Bussian compared today’s journalists to the defenders of the Alamo. The forum at the University of North Carolina was scheduled on the 170th anniversary of the last day of battle at that Texas fortress.