The 2024 elections will be unlike any other. Are the media ready?

This article is part of our special section on the DealBook Summit that brought together business and policy leaders from around the world.

The future is here, and for many in the media world, it’s terrifying.

In an effort to understand the threats facing the media during the upcoming presidential campaign, I asked a California tech company to create a “deep fake” video of President Biden, the kind of inauthentic footage that journalists use on Election Day. could cause confusion.

The results were sobering. Within seconds, the company — which requested anonymity due to the controversial nature of the assignment — transformed my likeness into that of President Biden, using artificial intelligence technology and a video clip I recorded.

Every presidential election cycle in recent history has been shaped by the emergence of a new technology or the exploitation of an existing technology. But 2024 will be more complicated. In addition to the threats from ‘deep fakes’, journalists will have to fight a battle for the truth on multiple fronts, dealing with difficult reporting on the criminal proceedings against former President Donald J. Trump and declining trust in the news media.

“This will impact every aspect of American journalism, from the way we run our businesses, to the new competitors emerging, to the new sources of fake or manipulated media emerging and spreading,” said Jim VandeHei, co-founder from Politico and Axios. . “Strap in.”

Trump TV

Most election years, coverage of the grueling campaign trail dominates the airwaves as candidates make the quadrennial pilgrimage to seemingly every fish fry, state fair and union hall between the coasts.

This year, things will be a little different and journalists and media executives making reporting decisions will be in for a shock.

With Mr. Trump facing criminal charges in New York, Georgia, Washington, D.C. and Florida, one of the dominant narratives of the 2024 campaign will most likely be the outcome of those criminal proceedings, said David Axelrod, former President Barack’s architect. Obama’s presidential campaigns and a senior fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

That poses a challenge for news organizations, Mr. Axelrod said. Mr. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and railed against prosecutors, signaling he would try to use the charges for political gain.

With Mr. Trump likely to wage his campaign “from the courthouse steps,” journalists will be forced to separate the facts of the case from Mr. Trump’s partisan attacks in real time, Mr. Axelrod said. News directors will be tasked with covering the case without spreading falsehoods or showering Mr. Trump with unnecessary airtime, as they have done in Mr. Trump’s previous campaigns.

“He knows the case he wants to make, and it has nothing to do with the law,” Mr. Axelrod said. “He is going to advance a narrative of political persecution.”

Political persecution is exactly what many conservative legal experts think the charges against Mr. Trump amount to. Josh Hammer, a constitutional lawyer and syndicated columnist who has written extensively about the cases against Mr. Trump, said the proceedings posed a very different challenge for mainstream news organizations: being fair to the former president.

Mr. Hammer said that the overwhelming majority of reporting on Mr. Trump’s legal troubles, including cable news segments and newspaper editorials, had shown that the press had reached its guilty verdict before the jury had a chance to weigh in.

“The hardest part is for the media to separate the objective, legal facts from what their obvious preferences are,” said Mr. Hammer, a conservative who is backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid.

Deep fakes

President Biden’s artificial video is just one example of the many types of inauthentic content journalists will struggle with in 2024.

Elections in Chicago and Slovakia in Eastern Europe have already been disrupted by fake audio clips released before the election, spreading disinformation about candidates during a crucial period, said Sam Gregory, executive director of Witness, a nonprofit that investigates human rights abuses denounces. emerging technologies such as deep fakes and generative AI

Deep Fake technology has become so ubiquitous that it is now possible to create inauthentic photos, videos and audio faster than it takes to debunk them, Mr. Gregory said. Furthermore, most mainstream news organizations have not invested in the resources necessary to verify and publish disinformation under a tight deadline.

The fake videos and audios are also another problem. They create an environment where everyone is skeptical of everything, including real information, Mr. Gregory said.

“Knowing that people don’t have the skills to do the detection, it’s very easy to say, ‘Oh, that was fake,’ and knowing that it will be difficult for people to prove that it’s actually real, ” he said. .

Still, there are some opportunities for observant fake sleuths, Mr. Gregory said. While audio is more complicated, images and video contain a range of context clues that can help prove whether a piece of footage is real, and you can compare faked footage of an event with real one to spot inconsistencies.

Any downsides that generative AI technology brings to media must be weighed against its benefits, says Steve Amato, the founder and CEO of Conflicta Los Angeles studio that has used the technology to create marketing campaigns for companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Disney.

Mr. Amato cited medicine and education as areas where the technology could be useful, bringing healthcare providers closer to patients virtually and providing students with immersive learning experiences.

“We are also in awe of all these things, but also on the positive side,” Mr. Amato said.

Decline in confidence

One of the biggest challenges facing the press next year has nothing to do with emerging technology or political attacks. Readers simply don’t trust the press as they used to, experts say, and that could have major consequences come election time.

About a quarter of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2019 said they do not have much confidence in the information they receive from the national news media. That number is even higher among Republicans about a third of those who claim to have little confidence in national news.

In-depth falsifications and accusations of bias from politicians are particularly damaging because they reach voters who are already distrustful of traditional media, said Frank Sesno, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.

To combat declining trust, news managers must be more transparent with their readers and their views on their journalism, showing them how stories are made and why, he said. That doesn’t mean news networks like CNN should play an “endless tape loop” of “journalistic primers,” Mr. Sesno said, but it does mean explaining what makes certain topics newsworthy.

“People love to be taken behind the scenes,” Mr. Sesno said. “People were applauding years ago when I watched ‘Spotlight’ in the theater.”

In addition to being more open with readers, news organizations should also push back against politicians like Mr. Trump, who accuse the press of being dishonest or deliberately spreading misinformation, Mr. Sesno said.

If an airline faced attacks from competitors saying its planes were not safe, the company would mount a massive public relations campaign to reassure passengers and win back their business, he said.

“When the media does that, it often sounds like a self-congratulatory slap,” Sesno said. “But they have to respond.”