Panel Moderated by Newhouse Dean Mark Lodato Covers Media’s Impact on Election

Covering an election year is no easy feat for any newsroom, and the 2024 election cycle has brought its own set of challenges. They include the rise of artificial intelligence and deepfakes, declines in media literacy and many Americans feeling the national media is “out of touch” and untrustworthy. 

Journalists sought to provide clarity during a panel discussion in New York City hosted by the Paley Center for Media, a nonprofit dedicated to media preservation, history and exploration.  

“I consider my job, and the job of those of us in the media, to be to find the balance,” Jessica Tarlov, a cohost of FOX News’ “The Five,” said about the media’s involvement in the 2024 presidential election. “It feels like the pendulum is just too wild—that it’s all Trump stuff all the time, or all liberal stuff all the time, which is unhealthy.”  

Newhouse Dean Mark Lodato moderated the Sept. 25 panel, “A Presidential Election Unlike Any Other: The Media and the 2024 Race.” It was the Paley Center’s latest discussion in its Media Impact Series, which spotlights media’s role in influencing thought and behavior.  

Besides Tarlov, other panelists included Joshua Glick, a film and electronic arts professor at Bard College; Margaret Hoover, the host of PBS’s “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover;” Christine Quinn, a commentator and president and CEO of WIN; and Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute. 

As the moderator, Lodato said he hoped to facilitate “a spirited and rewarding conversation.” He raised questions that pinpointed anxieties unique to the 2024 election, like how generative AI can influence campaigning through memes or deepfakes; how two assassination attempts have warped the typical election process; and how the gutting of local media outlets plus financial incentives have affected the national media reporting. 

The role of media is critical, especially in a race as close as the 2024 election. As Quinn explained, “People are winning congressional seats by merely hundreds of votes, it’s just hard to wrap your mind around—but does and should empower us that one vote really does make a difference. I think this race right now for the White House is neck and neck.”  

The panelists did agree on the idea that the media’s mission is to “fortify the truth,” something difficult for reporters to uphold in a “post-truth reality,” Tarlov said. 

“In 2017 or 2018, the ‘alternative facts’ statement was made, and no one really understood what that was—I think we get it now,” she said “No amount of fact-checking, no amount of explanation is going to make a difference, because people are either taking the smallest molecule of truth and blowing it up to whatever they want, or just frankly saying, ‘I don’t care.’”   

At the end of the panel, Lodato asked how the news and news consumers could connect with those across the aisle and pursue the mission of truth. The panelists came to another consensus, voiced by Glick. 

“Think about your favorite friend, relative, neighbor, who disagrees with you very deeply about an issue that matters a lot to you, and think about how that is a decent person,” he said. “That is someone who you’re going to have to live with, regardless of the outcome of this election.” 

Replied Lodato, “A return to civil discourse.”  The audience gave a round of applause.