This year’s “Islanders Write” series kicked off on Sunday evening in Featherstone with a discussion about uncovering the truth in a “post-truth era”.
The opening keynote was moderated by MV Times Publisher Charles Sennott and featured a panel of four speakers, including John Forté, Dawn Porter, John Battelle and Dr. Ala Stanford. Each panelist had different perspectives and offered new views on what it means to tell the truth.
Islanders Write opened on Sunday evening and continued to offer a schedule of author talks and workshops throughout the day on Monday.
In this age of artificial intelligence and the rampant spread of misinformation via social media, Sunday’s discussion focused on the future of spreading truth in numerous sectors, from public health to music.
Dr. Stanford, a pediatric surgeon and founder of the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, shed light on racial injustices in public health and how to correct biases to bring the truth to light. She said her new book, “Take Care of Them Like My Own,” is an attempt to bring the truth to light about inequities in the public health crisis, especially in times of COVID-19.
“The book is about triumph over tragedy,” Stanford said. Her work in founding the Black Doctors Consortium, her experiences growing up in Philadelphia and her help in the community during the COVID-19 crisis are all detailed in her book.
Stanford emphasized that she relies on facts and data from a public health perspective. And in a similar vein, Dawn Porter, a filmmaker and documentary maker who appeared at the Sundance Film Festival, described how her work as a storyteller is grounded in facts.
Her work, Porter said, is grounded in truth. She has told stories from throughout history, including her most recent project retelling the life of former First Lady Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson. She said she has always valued accuracy and fact-checking in making her films.
“Perspective is important, as is the way the truth is presented to you,” Porter said. When she collaborated with John Oliver – of Last Week Tonight – on a film about abortion laws, Porter described the process his team used to carefully fact-check everything.
From a documentary filmmaker’s perspective, she said, the ethical rules can sometimes be a gray area. Currently, she and other documentary filmmakers often talk about how to more effectively convey the truth through documentary storytelling and what needs to be done to maintain that standard.
John Battelle, founder of Wired, held a similar perspective to Porter as a journalist.
“It’s often easier to find lies than the truth,” Battelle said of the way we process online media. In his view, there is currently a tendency in the media to cater to an audience, which often compromises the truth.
And in a sector very different from the other panelists, John Forté, who helped produce the Fugees’ album “The Score,” shed light on his work in the music and production industry. Referring to the “post-truth era,” he described the rise of artificial intelligence and began to demystify the uncertainty surrounding it.
Forté described the benefits he experienced in using artificial intelligence tools in his work, although like many others he was initially skeptical and unsure. And he stressed that in the world of hip-hop, it is necessary to keep things “realistic” in the lyrics.
He described his hope as being to proclaim the truth to future generations. He said he was thinking of his children as he did this work.
“Every one of these islanders is a herald of the truth,” Sennott said of the panel, “all fighting for the truth.”
The panel closed after a few hours of discussion and Islanders Write continues on Monday with workshops and another series of speakers.
