Variety and Rolling Stone are proud to announce the joint release of their fourth annual Truth Seekers special issue celebrating journalism and documentary filmmaking. The special print edition coincides with the annual Truth Seekers Summit, presented by Paramount+ in New York on Aug. 14, featuring panel discussions about investigative and non-fiction storytelling with notable figures in media and entertainment.
CNN anchor Abby Phillip is now set to present the recently announced Variety & Rolling Stone Truth Seeker Award to Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent. Phillip currently anchors CNN’s “NewsNight With Abby Phillip.”
In other highlights, the Truth Seekers Summit has also added a conversation with Nyle DiMarco, co-director and producer of ‘Deaf President Now!,’ a documentary detailing the events that led to the landmark passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. DiMarco co-directed the doc with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim.
This year’s standalone issue and online hub of articles include:
A look at a secret Afghan paramilitary unit, run by the CIA and trained by American special-ops soldiers, who assisted the U.S. in its fight against Al Qaeda and ISIS and today are struggling to build a life here in America.
An essay by incarcerated author John J. Lennon about what it’s like to have a crime you committed turned into true-crime entertainment by the likes of Dick Wolf.
A yarn about a high-schooler who managed to convince jazz great Thelonious Monk to play a show at his high school in 1968 — and the battle over the long-lost recording of that show that was eventually released as an album that was nominated for six Grammys in 2020.
An investigation (coinciding with a documentary film called “The Stringer”) into the true origins of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo “Napalm Girl,” and the contentious revelation that photographer Nick Út, who has long been credited with the image, may not have taken it after all.
A profile of a reporter in Culiacán, Mexico, in the province of Sinaloa, who works as a fixer for foreign journalists, connecting them with cartel leaders, sicarios, and victims of the region’s drug wars.
Finally, the special issue will also include a list of the 15 best media documentaries and a short Q&A with “Succession” and “Mountainhead” writer-director Jesse Armstrong compiled by Variety’s editorial team.
To register for the livestream, head to variety.com/truthseekers.
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