Films by Andrew Rossi
1:31:05With the Internet surpassing print as the main news source, and newspapers going bankrupt, Page One chronicles the mainstream-media industry’s transformation, while commenting on what it views as the high stakes for democracy and informedness as told from inside the newsroom at The New York Times. For a year, this film follows journalists at the paper’s Media Desk, a department created to cover the transformation of the media industry. Through this prism-within-a-prism, a complex view emerges of a media landscape fraught with both decline and opportunity, as writers like David Carr track print journalism’s metamorphosis even as their own paper struggles to stay vital and solvent, publishing material from WikiLeaks and encouraging writers to connect more directly with their audience. Meanwhile, rigorous journalism is still alive, but is facing perhaps the most tumultuous time in generations.
1:34:33After Truth is about the growing proliferation of modern disinformation, where almost anybody with a computer and social media access can have a powerful platform without oversight, influencing the information experiences of billions of people. The melting pot is catalysed by Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, 4chan, and other websites that spread disinformation to huge audiences with a profit incentive, competing to capture everyone’s attention. After Truth asks the question about where all this is heading, by exemplifying events such as Jade Helm, Seth Rich, and Pizzagate, but also profiling some major and minor personalities involved in spreading disinformation, conspiracy theories, fear, and uncertainty. With an empire in collapse, and physical reality being increasingly replaced by popular postmodern theories of “there is only subjective truth,” this film not only presents the challenge of returning to what is real, but the task of stopping disinformation from continuing to divide, confuse, distract, and destroy.