Light in Darkness: Variety and Rolling Stones Truth Seekers Summit Tackles Disinformation W

August 2024 · 6 minute read

In our current tumultuous political climate, with the concept of truth seemingly tested daily, the future of democracy feels like it’s hanging in the balance. Variety and Rolling Stone will explore some of the ways the media industry is navigating the disinformation age during the fourth annual Truth Seekers Summit.

CNN anchor and senior political correspondent Abby Phillip, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney and Susan Zirinsky, president of CBS News’ See It Now Studios, are among the luminaries who will attend the Aug. 15 invitation-only summit in Manhattan. There they will discuss their pursuit of the truth in different formats including documentaries, news programming and comedy.

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Journalist and author E. Jean Carroll will receive the Truth Seeker Award at the event, which will feature a keynote conversation with Gibney and separate fireside chats with Zirinsky and Nancy Grace, host of “Crime Stories With Nancy Grace.” Phillip will join Yamiche Alcindor, NBC News’ Washington correspondent, and MSNBC anchor Katy Tur on a panel titled “Politics in the Zeitgeist” to discuss how they are helping audiences navigate the current landscape in America. Andrew McCarthy, director and producer of “Brats” and “The Jinx” creator Andrew Jarecki are among the other notables participating in the summit.

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On the lighter side, “The Daily Show” contributor Lewis Black will join comedians Amber Ruffin, Charlamagne Tha God and Alex Edelman on the “Best Mashup” panel about politics, humor and pop culture.

“We are going through a major transition from the industrial age to the technological age and we have not adjusted,” says Black. “So as a result, we are in this new age of people looking on their screens for what they believe is the truth. There are a variety of social media platforms out there that can provide you with anything that you agree with and because you agree with it, you think it’s the truth, but it really has nothing to do with reality. We have access to every piece of knowledge on Earth, and we are dumber than we’ve ever been. It’s unbelievable.”

Brian Knappenberger, who recently directed Netflix’s “Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War” docuseries and will participate in the summit’s “True Crime Masters Tell All” panel, says that the shift in information technology in the last decade has led us into “a chaotic world of misinformation.”

“The current public square where our national conversation takes place is social media, but that’s not public at all,” says Knappenberger. “Social media companies are private companies that decide what ideas are on their platforms. There is no free speech there. Free speech doesn’t apply to platforms and the basic notion of journalism has been practically beaten to a bloody pulp by these social media companies.”

Knappenberger approaches his work like a journalist who fact checks and vets his subjects. “What is the job of the documentarian or the journalist?” asks Knappenberger. “What is the purpose of our work? What is its intent? The purpose is to go after the powerful and to protect the powerless, and to be a voice for those that don’t have a voice.”

But with newspapers around the country collapsing and more and more docs serving as advertisements for celebrities, people like filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir (“Born in Synanon”) are worried about the documentary genre.

“We are in this weird place where entertainment and journalism are intersecting and I think, in some ways, that can lead to more creativity, but in other ways there’s also a really high risk,” says Gandbhir, who will also participate in the “True Crime Masters Tell All” session. “Documentary filmmakers have to keep holding ourselves to certain standards if we are going to claim to be a fact-based documentary. Otherwise, we have to admit to being something else.”

(Pictured: CNN’s Abby Phillip)

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