Spotlight (2015): The Catholic Sex abuse scandal that changed Journalism forever
Beyond a gripping tell-all historical drama, Spotlight (2015) teaches the perfect lesson for why true journalism knows no shortcuts.
Warning: Details of sexual abuse mentioned.
Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight (2015) portrays the Boston Globes investigative journalism team of the same name and their uncovering of the child sexual abuse scandal partaken by the Boston Archdiocese.
According to the film, the Boston Globe and the titular team published nearly 600 articles related to the scandal resulting in the public accusation of 249 Priests and Brothers, and uncovering the truths of well over 1,000 survivors.
Hitherto the Jan. 2002 Boston Globe article that sparked a revolution, these atrocities were — at large — swept under the rug for decades thanks to the monumental power and influence of the Catholic Archdioceses.
To understand the true degree of the uphill battle the Spotlight team faced, one must first understand the absolute vice grip that Catholicism had on Boston circa 2002 in the first place.
The film states that over half of the Boston Globe's audience at the time was Catholic, but the influence of Catholicism goes way deeper than that. In 20th-century Boston, faith outweighed science. During this time, Boston was considered by many the most heavily influenced Catholic city in the world. Catholicism completely shaped Bostonian morals at the time, especially in poorer Boston neighborhoods.
“When you're a poor kid from a poor town religion counts for a lot… when a Priest asks you to do something, it’s like God asking you for help”
- Neal Huff as survivor Phil Saviano in Spotlight.
To challenge Catholicism was to challenge God. The Boston Diocese was effectively the judge, jury, and executioner of the area at the time. The gilded apple-esque iconography of Catholicism had a noose around the neck of ethical whole-truth journalism and those it kept employed.
The posthumously mentioned Phil Saviano was an advocate for the survivors as well as the founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). A revelation both horrendous and most tarnishing to the legacy of objective journalism is that Saviano had tried to warn the Boston Globe years before the scandal was finally exposed. In 1998, the Boston Globe passed on Saviano's story and evidence. Favoritism, conflicting interests, and the inconceivable notion of a Priest sexually abusing children trumped what Saviano had to say.
Spotlight asserts that the accusations just seemed so ludicrous to the Bostonian society that Boston Globe Editor Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) paid no mind to the evidence that Saviano and other whistleblowers initially brought forth.
But how was this so unfathomable being that there was a public record of David A. Holley — the same priest who abused Fabiano as a boy — being arrested for abusing boys in the 1970s? Because of conflicting interests.
Robinson was raised Catholic. He attended Boston College High School — an all-male Catholic preparatory school, then furthered his education at Northeastern — a private university with heavy Catholic influence. Robinson had to challenge his entire way of life to uncover this truth.
“The film was extraordinarily faithful in portraying what happened at the Globe — how the story came about, the major steps we took pursuing it, the personalities involved, and the results of our work.”
— Robinson said in a 2016 interview with America Magazine.
Burn the whole house down
Spotlight masterfully depicts not only the internal but also the external dilemmas that Robinson and The Boston Globe faced when they began their investigation over two decades ago.
Discoveries ranging from powerful Catholic Lobbyists conveniently hidden behind charitable funds to the manipulation of public court documents helped to uncover the past events of a couple of Priests / Brothers of the Boston Diocese.
What started as a couple then became over a dozen… and then upwards of ninety!
The Spotlight team would make note of all the prominent members of the Diocese who went on ‘leave’ — or something of the sort within the time frame of their accusation.
The Boston Globe refused to go public with their information until they had enough evidence to topple the entire system.
The impact of the Spotlight team
It's nearly impossible to go into detail regarding every way Spotlight broke through the barriers of iconology and sociocultural standards of their environment. As I mentioned before The Boston Globe alone published nearly 600 articles about the scandal through 2002, most of which were details about the new Survivors who had the courage to come out with their stories.
The team exemplified the blue-chip journalism standards of objectivity and accountability when all the odds were stacked against them. Spotlight gave a voice to the voiceless.
Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law resigned, and to this day over 6,000 Catholic clergy members have been publicly accused of sexual abuse in the United States. But most importantly, the Spotlight team flipped the entire ideology of Massachusetts on its head.
As of 2018, 33 percent of Baystaters (Massachusetts citizens) reported that they weren't affiliated with any religion, tied for the third highest of all states. Thanks to the groundbreaking reporting of a few journalists Goliath had finally taken a hit, and the church had finally begun its much-needed separation from the state.
