Release date: September 7, 2023
Trust Me Screening & Panel Discussion
Elk River Arts & Lectures will present a screening of the 2023 Walter Cronkite Excellence in Journalism Award-winning documentary Trust Me, followed by a panel discussion about media literacy in our community, on Tuesday, September 26 at 7 p.m. at Elk River Books (122 S. 2nd St. in Livingston). The event is free and open to the public.
Trust Me shows how an avalanche of biased news and misinformation is undermining trust in society. Sensational media take advantage of our survival instincts to earn more clicks and ad revenue with shocking headlines that we enable each time we share. Trust Me uses compelling human stories, facts, and expert voices to show empirical realities and the right way to consume media.
Joe Phelps, a Paradise Valley resident and the film’s producer, added, “Technology makes it increasingly easy for all of us to be duped by bad actors. Credible research has shown that the over-50 crowd are the worst at sharing misinformation. Livingston schools have licensed the film. So, many of our students have seen Trust Me. Now we’re hoping this screening will attract parents and grandparents.”
A discussion about media literacy in our own community will follow and feature a panel of local educators, journalists, and media advocates. They include Joe Phelps, the producer of Trust Me and founder of the Getting Better Foundation and, an organization dedicated to helping build trust through truth; Scott McMillion, award-winning journalist and Editor of the Montana Quarterly; and Kate Lende, Park High School’s librarian and the co-teacher of Multimedia Journalism, the class that produces the student newspaper, yearbook, and maintains the news website, www.parkhighgeyser.org. The conversation will be moderated by investigative journalist Johnathan Hettinger.
Elk River Arts & Lectures is a nonprofit organization dedicated to celebrating and cultivating the literary arts in Park County.
For more information about this event, call (406) 220-8630 or visit elkriverarts.org. To learn more about the film, visit trustmedocumentary.com.