Why are many TV personalities beginning to pronounce "daughter" as "dotter"?

I have noticed the changing of proununciations of words with -au and -aw by TV presenters which is spilling over into everyday speech. For example “dotter” for daughter, “otto” for auto, “jah” for jaw, “cahfe” for coffee, “don” for dawn, “lahn” for lawn, “wotter” for water. Are these pronunciations correct or are merely affectations in speech to sound more sophisticated or educated or possibly to distinguish themselves from having New Yawk area accent?

I was listening to a broadcast and the presenter said

Next we will hear from Don.

The next segment was presented by a woman whose name was Dawn.

Any insight will be appreciated.

This is the cot-caught merger, where the sounds /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are merged—that is, people with this merger pronounce the words cot and caught the same. This merger is quite widespread—it is more common than not all over the western United States and Canada, and has made inroads in the east as well.

Map of the cot-caught merger, from the TELSUR Project.

Most people who have this merger aren’t even aware that the words cot and caught could be pronounced differently. I know this personally as I have this merger natively, and had no idea until I took a course in Linguistics in college. So, I don’t think it’s an affectation in that most people who talk this way have no idea there is a different way to pronounce the sounds.

Sounds like the cot-caught merger.