Dawn Sterling

Sinclair ABC affiliates WICS-WICD Springfield, Ill. has hired Dawn Sterling. She will join Stacey Skrysak on the evening news desk. With a background and extensive experience in Central Illinois, “Sterling is bringing a fresh perspective and a wealth of knowledge to our viewers.”

Sterling is a graduate of Central Michigan University. She began her news career in Binghamton, N.Y., then worked at WTHI Terre Haute, In. She also worked for Sinclair-owned WSMH Flint, Mich., before moving to Central Illinois in 2004

“Our goal is to take our local newscasts to the next level. What better way to do that than to bring in an anchor with years of experience in the local market. I see this as a win, not only for us, but for Central Illinois viewers,” says WICS-WRSP News Director Heather Nodine.

“It’s rare that you get to hire someone with Dawn’s skills and abilities with two decades of experience in the market” says WICS-WRSP General Manager Robert Richardson.

Sterling begins on-air Jan. 15 and will co-anchor the news at 5, 6, and 10 p.m. with Skrysak. Sterling will also make appearances on the Fox Illinois newscasts at 5:30 and 9 p.m.

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“We’re meeting our audience’s needs by adding an extra hour of news every morning to help prepare them for the day ahead,” said Michael Valentine, WUSA VP-station manager. Get Up DC will now be on from 4:30 to 7 a.m., followed by CBS Mornings from 7 to 9, then back at 9 to 10. The now five-and-a-half-hour morning time block will give our viewers a mix of coverage focusing on what’s local to the DMV and national news.”

The Get Up DC anchor team of Wisdom Martin, Allison Seymour and Annie Yu will continue as the hosts for this expanded hour.

WUSA’s Great Day Washington, a live, daily talk show, will move to 3 p.m. weekdays. Valentine added: “Great Day Washington explores the region’s entertainment, food, travel and so much more, and serves up helpful information for our audience, including relevant sponsored segments.”

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Scripps launched the Journalism Journey Initiative — for which Google has made a multiyear financial commitment to Scripps to underwrite — with the first cohort of six journalists in 2023. After a successful first year of the program, Scripps is expanding the program by funding an additional seven journalists for 2024.

Jim Iovino, program director for the Scripps Journalism Journey Initiative, says: “Year one of the Journalism Journey Initiative at Scripps saw the first group of journalists producing essential coverage, including reporting that led to changes in laws, exposed wrongdoing and went in depth on important local and national issues. Their success is a testament to the incredible amount of expertise in local print newsrooms around the country and what can happen when video-driven newsrooms harness that talent to help tell stories that need to be told.

“It’s why Scripps has made the investment to expand the number of journalists we can help transition from print-to-video reporting. These 13 journalists have the fundamentals, and we’ll be giving them the tools they need to connect with their audiences and communities on visual-based platforms.”

The JJI program will provide extensive training and support, including mentoring, skill development and individual talent coaching. Journalists will be based out of Scripps’ local television stations across the country and national news network Scripps News.

Scripps’ Journalism Journey Initiative second journalist cohort (2024-2025):

• Jasmin Barmore is a neighborhood and community journalist whose work has made national headlines and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Barmore most recently reported for The Detroit Free Press and holds bylines with The Detroit News, BET and The New York Times. She will be working for Scripps’ Detroit ABC affiliate, WXYZ.
• Manuelita Beck has 18 years of experience in digital transformation and content strategy. Beck was most recently the politics editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Previously, she spent seven years at Gannett in several editing and digital roles at the Arizona Republic, USA Today and IndyStar.com. A New Mexico native and Latina, Beck is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and is Tábąąhá (Water’s Edge Clan). Beck will work at KNXV, Scripps’ ABC affiliate in Phoenix.
• Maki Becker was born in Japan, grew up in California and has lived around the country, but Buffalo, N.Y., has become her hometown. Becker has been on The Buffalo News staff since 2005. She previously worked at the New York Daily News and The Charlotte Observer. She was also a stringer at the Los Angeles Times. Becker will work at WKBW, Scripps’ ABC affiliate in Buffalo.
• Keith BieryGolick has spent a decade reporting in Cincinnati. In 2018, he was part of a team of reporters that won a Pulitzer Prize for their examination of the region’s opioid epidemic. BieryGolick will work at WCPO, Scripps’ ABC affiliate in Cincinnati.
• Edward Celaya worked previously at the Arizona Daily Star. He started his career as an opinion and editorial writer, covered breaking news and helped develop the first full-time cannabis beat at a major newspaper in Arizona. Celaya will be joining the team at KGUN, the Scripps ABC affiliate in Tucson, Ariz.
• Jennifer Glenfield previously worked for the Tampa Bay Times. As the senior video producer, Glenfield earned a Suncoast Regional Emmy for a digital video series focused on history and culture and was part of the multimedia teams on two Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations. She previously covered social justice issues with Univision’s Fusion Media Group. Glenfield will be joining Scripps News.
• Craig Harris will begin his 33rd year in journalism in 2024. He most recently was editor of the startup The Coronado News, which won two national awards for its investigation of the Tijuana sewage crisis. Harris has worked at seven daily newspapers, including USA Today and The Arizona Republic, where he was a two-time Polk Award winner and was among the lead writers when The Republic was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news. Harris will work at KGTV, Scripps’ ABC station in San Diego.
• Michelle Jarboe has written extensively about real estate and economic development. She previously worked as an enterprise reporter for Crain’s Cleveland Business. Before joining Crain’s, she covered real estate for The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland for more than a decade. She will work at WEWS, Scripps’ ABC affiliate in Cleveland.
• Maria Morales comes from Baltimore Sun Media, where she was a senior content editor. She previously reported on race, culture and social justice issues for The Crisis Magazine and The Afro-American Newspaper. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Los Angeles Business Journal, The Press-Enterprise and a host of magazines. Morales will work at WMAR, Scripps’ ABC affiliate in Baltimore.
• Steve Sebelius was most recently the politics and government editor for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he also wrote a weekly political column. He’s also been editor of Las Vegas CityLife, at the time the oldest alternative newsweekly in Las Vegas. Sebelius will work at KTNV, the Scripps ABC affiliate in Las Vegas.
• Taylor Stevens’ career has taken her from homeless camps in Phoenix, Arizona, to the banks of the Great Salt Lake and into southern Mexico to report on the immigration crisis. She recently spent a year and a half working as a freelancer with The Associated Press’ Global Investigations Team on a national project focused on policing practices. She will work as an investigative reporter at KSTU, Scripps’ Fox affiliate in her hometown of Salt Lake City.
• Kadia Tubman is the former managing editor for diversity, equity and inclusion for Insider’s global newsroom. Prior to joining Insider’s editorial leadership team, Tubman was a senior news editor guiding Insider’s breaking news coverage between New York, London and Los Angeles on weekends. Before Insider, she was a national politics reporter at Yahoo News and a Reuters journalist fellow at the University of Oxford. Tubman will join Scripps News.
• Harm Venhuizen most recently worked at The Associated Press, where he was a Report for America corps member covering Wisconsin state government with an emphasis on elections and voting rights. He previously reported on the U.S. military for Military Times. Venhuizen will continue covering Wisconsin politics for WTMJ and WGBA, Scripps’ NBC affiliates in Milwaukee and Green Bay, respectively.

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CEO Suzanne Scott said: “For the past 27 years, Scott has been an integral part of the Fox News Media family. His extraordinary work has helped transform our field operations and events coverage, ensuring our platforms continue to deliver best in class coverage from around the world.”

A Fox News Channel original, Wilder joined the network at its inception in 1996 as a field photographer. Since then, he has helped innovate and enhance all aspects of FNC’s breaking news and events programming, including all the network’s election coverage over nearly three decades.

In his previous role as senior vice president of field production and operations, Wilder oversaw the first two Republican presidential primary debates of the 2024 cycle. In September, he oversaw the production surrounding Fox Business Network’s debate moderated by Dana Perino and Stuart Varney in Simi Valley, Calif.

Additionally, in November 2023, he spearheaded Sean Hannity’s The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate: Newsom vs. DeSantis in Alpharetta, Georgia which pulled in more than 5 million viewers making it not only the highest-rated program of the night, but also out-rating the third non-Fox primary debate which took place the following week.

In 2022, Wilder led the network’s midterm election coverage, including several town halls and election night special programming, which was the most watched in all of television. Throughout his tenure with the network, he has overseen the production and operations for all major political events, including international presidential diplomacy trips and numerous G8 summits.

He has also helped create the signature look for Fox Nation’s annual Patriot Awards, which just held its fifth celebration at The Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville. Notably he oversaw the production of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022 as well as President Biden’s inauguration in 2021 along with special live coverage of his first joint address to congress.

Wilder also helped engineer more than 40 remote studios across the country as the pandemic mandated a global shutdown in 2020, ensuring Fox News Media platforms continued to deliver news and information to millions of viewers nationwide.

Throughout the pandemic, Wilder led all special events coverage, from the presidential campaign trail and the conventions to numerous COVID-19 related town halls, including with former President Donald Trump and his task force, to the social justice protests following the death of George Floyd and the memorial services honoring civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, all while maintaining social distancing and health safety protocols.

In addition to overseeing all of Fox News Media events coverage, Wilder has also helped innovate and advance the network’s technical and field operations units. In 2019, he was elevated to vice president of field operations where he transformed the production team, implementing a collaborative field production unit that created news-specific environments to broadcast around the world.

From 2017-2019, he served as director of field and aerial operations where he helped integrate new technologies into network coverage, including innovative drone footage that was used across breaking news and live events coverage. Previously, he served as ENG field operations supervisor from 2007 to 2017 and prior to that was the field photographer and coordinator of ENG operations.

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Barbara Williams, CBC executive vice president, says: “I offer my deep gratitude to Susan for the leadership she has shown, her unwavering dedication to news and local programming, and her strong commitment to making CBC a more inclusive place for staff and for our audiences. She made a difference and she will be missed.

“With Susan’s retirement, there is no one better suited and prepared to take the helm of CBC News than Brodie. He is a seasoned journalist and an empathetic leader who will continue to shape the strategic direction of CBC News, guiding the news team through these turbulent times and ensuring that CBC News remains essential to audiences across the country.”

Marjetti first joined CBC Halifax in 1988. Among the wide range of roles she has taken on with CBC, she led CBC Radio and Audio for nearly five years, during which time, the Juno Awards returned to CBC Music and the CBC Listen streaming platform, and CBC Podcasts unit, were created and launched.

Her commitment to local programming extended to the evolution of CBC Toronto back in 2001, to better reflect and connect with Canada’s most multicultural city, and leading to morning radio show Metro Morning and the local Toronto station taking the No. 1 spot in Canada’s largest radio market. Her leadership and vision led to the launch of new stations in Kitchener-Waterloo and CBC’s first digital station in Hamilton.

Marjetti has championed CBC News’ digital transformation and the accessibility of CBC News content across platforms, available to audiences wherever they are. Since 2020, Marjetti has served as general manager of CBC News.

Fenlon’s breadth of journalistic experience has been gained across top-tier print, digital and broadcast news organizations in Canada. A graduate of the journalism program at Western University, Fenlon worked as a reporter for newspapers in London, Ontario and Toronto before moving to digital news at The Globe and Mail.

In 2011, he helped launch The Huffington Post Canada. Following that, Fenlon joined CBC News as managing editor in 2013 and was later appointed senior director of digital news. In 2017, Fenlon was placed in charge of daily news and domestic and foreign bureaus. Since 2020, he has served as editor in chief and executive director of programs and standards for CBC News.

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Experts warn it will likely be worse in the coming presidential election contest. The safeguards that attempted to counter the bogus claims the last time are eroding, while the tools and systems that create and spread them are only getting stronger.

Many Americans, egged on by former President Donald Trump, have continued to push the unsupported idea that elections throughout the U.S. can’t be trusted. A majority of Republicans (57%) believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president.

Meanwhile, generative artificial intelligence tools have made it far cheaper and easier to spread the kind of misinformation that can mislead voters and potentially influence elections. And social media companies that once invested heavily in correcting the record have shifted their priorities.

“I expect a tsunami of misinformation,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial intelligence expert and professor emeritus at the University of Washington. “I can’t prove that. I hope to be proven wrong. But the ingredients are there, and I am completely terrified.”

AI DEEPFAKES GO MAINSTREAM

Manipulated images and videos surrounding elections are nothing new, but 2024 will be the first U.S. presidential election in which sophisticated AI tools that can produce convincing fakes in seconds are just a few clicks away.

The fabricated images, videos and audio clips known as deepfakes have started making their way into experimental presidential campaign ads. More sinister versions could easily spread without labels on social media and fool people days before an election, Etzioni said.

“You could see a political candidate like President Biden being rushed to a hospital,” he said. “You could see a candidate saying things that he or she never actually said. You could see a run on the banks. You could see bombings and violence that never occurred.”

High-tech fakes already have affected elections around the globe, said Larry Norden, senior director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Just days before Slovakia’s recent elections, AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a liberal candidate discussing plans to raise beer prices and rig the election. Fact-checkers scrambled to identify them as false, but they were shared as real across social media regardless.

These tools might also be used to target specific communities and hone misleading messages about voting. That could look like persuasive text messages, false announcements about voting processes shared in different languages on WhatsApp, or bogus websites mocked up to look like official government ones in your area, experts said.

Faced with content that is made to look and sound real, “everything that we’ve been wired to do through evolution is going to come into play to have us believe in the fabrication rather than the actual reality,” said misinformation scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the Federal Election Commission are exploring steps to regulate the technology, but they haven’t finalized any rules or legislation. That’s left states to enact the only restrictions so far on political AI deepfakes.

A handful of states have passed laws requiring deepfakes to be labeled or banning those that misrepresent candidates. Some social media companies, including YouTube and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have introduced AI labeling policies. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to consistently catch violators.

SOCIAL MEDIA GUARDRAILS FADE

It was just over a year ago that Elon Musk bought Twitter and began firing its executives, dismantling some of its core features and reshaping the social media platform into what’s now known as X.

Since then, he has upended its verification system, leaving public officials vulnerable to impersonators. He has gutted the teams that once fought misinformation on the platform, leaving the community of users to moderate itself. And he has restored the accounts of conspiracy theorists and extremists who were previously banned.

The changes have been applauded by many conservatives who say Twitter’s previous moderation attempts amounted to censorship of their views. But pro-democracy advocates argue the takeover has shifted what once was a flawed but useful resource for news and election information into a largely unregulated echo chamber that amplifies hate speech and misinformation.

Twitter used to be one of the “most responsible” platforms, showing a willingness to test features that might reduce misinformation even at the expense of engagement, said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a nonprofit watchdog group.

“Obviously now they’re on the exact other end of the spectrum,” he said, adding that he believes the company’s changes have given other platforms cover to relax their own policies. X didn’t answer emailed questions from The Associated Press, only sending an automated response.

In the run-up to 2024, X, Meta and YouTube have together removed 17 policies that protected against hate and misinformation, according to a report from Free Press, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights in tech and media.

In June, YouTube announced that while it would still regulate content that misleads about current or upcoming elections, it would stop removing content that falsely claims the 2020 election or other previous U.S. elections were marred by “widespread fraud, errors or glitches.” The platform said the policy was an attempt to protect the ability to “openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions.”

Lehrich said even if tech companies want to steer clear of removing misleading content, “there are plenty of content-neutral ways” platforms can reduce the spread of disinformation, from labeling months-old articles to making it more difficult to share content without reviewing it first.

X, Meta and YouTube also have laid off thousands of employees and contractors since 2020, some of whom have included content moderators.

The shrinking of such teams, which many blame on political pressure, “sets the stage for things to be worse in 2024 than in 2020,” said Kate Starbird, a misinformation expert at the University of Washington.

Meta explains on its website that it has some 40,000 people devoted to safety and security and that it maintains “the largest independent fact-checking network of any platform.” It also frequently takes down networks of fake social media accounts that aim to sow discord and distrust.

“No tech company does more or invests more to protect elections online than Meta – not just during election periods but at all times,” the posting says.

Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, said the platform is “heavily invested” in connecting people to high-quality content on YouTube, including for elections. She pointed to the platform’s recommendation and information panels, which provide users with reliable election news, and said the platform removes content that misleads voters on how to vote or encourages interference in the democratic process.

The rise of TikTok and other, less regulated platforms such as Telegram, Truth Social and Gab, also has created more information silos online where baseless claims can spread. Some apps that are particularly popular among communities of color and immigrants, such as WhatsApp and WeChat, rely on private chats, making it hard for outside groups to see the misinformation that may spread.

“I’m worried that in 2024, we’re going to see similar recycled, ingrained false narratives but more sophisticated tactics,” said Roberta Braga, founder and executive director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas. “But on the positive side, I am hopeful there is more social resilience to those things.”

THE TRUMP FACTOR

Trump’s front-runner status in the Republican presidential primary is top of mind for misinformation researchers who worry that it will exacerbate election misinformation and potentially lead to election vigilantism or violence.

The former president still falsely claims to have won the 2020 election.

“Donald Trump has clearly embraced and fanned the flames of false claims about election fraud in the past,” Starbird said. “We can expect that he may continue to use that to motivate his base.”

Without evidence, Trump has already primed his supporters to expect fraud in the 2024 election, urging them to intervene to ” guard the vote ” to prevent vote rigging in diverse Democratic cities. Trump has a long history of suggesting elections are rigged if he doesn’t win and did so before voting in 2016 and 2020.

That continued wearing away of voter trust in democracy can lead to violence, said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks misinformation.

“If people don’t ultimately trust information related to an election, democracy just stops working,” he said. “If a misinformation or disinformation campaign is effective enough that a large enough percentage of the American population does not believe that the results reflect what actually happened, then Jan. 6 will probably look like a warm-up act.”

ELECTION OFFICIALS RESPOND

Election officials have spent the years since 2020 preparing for the expected resurgence of election denial narratives. They’ve dispatched teams to explain voting processes, hired outside groups to monitor misinformation as it emerges and beefed up physical protections at vote-counting centers.

In Colorado, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said informative paid social media and TV campaigns that humanize election workers have helped inoculate voters against misinformation.

“This is an uphill battle, but we have to be proactive,” she said. “Misinformation is one of the biggest threats to American democracy we see today.”

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon’s office is spearheading #TrustedInfo2024, a new online public education effort by the National Association of Secretaries of State to promote election officials as a trusted source of election information in 2024.

His office also is planning meetings with county and city election officials and will update a “Fact and Fiction” information page on its website as false claims emerge. A new law in Minnesota will protect election workers from threats and harassment, bar people from knowingly distributing misinformation ahead of elections and criminalize people who non-consensually share deepfake images to hurt a political candidate or influence an election.

“We hope for the best but plan for the worst through these layers of protections,” Simon said.

In a rural Wisconsin county north of Green Bay, Oconto County Clerk Kim Pytleski has traveled the region giving talks and presentations to small groups about voting and elections to boost voters’ trust. The county also offers equipment tests in public so residents can observe the process.

“Being able to talk directly with your elections officials makes all the difference,” she said. “Being able to see that there are real people behind these processes who are committed to their jobs and want to do good work helps people understand we are here to serve them.”

Fernando reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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