http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-winship/spotlight-celebrates-hero_b_8652494.html
'Spotlight' Celebrates Heroes of Investigative Reporting -- and Democracy
Michael Winship | Senior writer, BillMoyers.com. Former senior writing fellow, Demos. President, Writers Guild of America, East. Posted: 11/27/2015
Long before I ever set
foot in an actual, working newsroom, I was a sucker for movies and TV shows
about journalism and reporters: the snappy dialogue, the nose for a scoop, the
determination to get at the truth and expose the bad guys.
I never miss Citizen
Kane, All
the President's Men or His
Girl Friday (the great, screwball
remake of that classic play, The Front Page). And when I entered the world of
journalism for real, briefly working as a freelance feature writer for a
now-deceased, great metropolitan newspaper and then for years in television news
and public affairs, I discovered that there really were people in the business
as funny, dedicated and talented as the characters on film (some stinkers, too,
but that's for my future, sure-to-go-straight-to-remaindered
memoir).
If you haven't already
heard, to the list of superb movies about the trade, you can now add Spotlight.
The riveting account of the Boston
Globe's investigative team exposingthe cover-up of
widespread pedophilia in the city's Catholic
Church -- and beyond -- stars a roster of big name
talent that without ego works together seamlessly as an ensemble: Michael
Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, John Slattery and Stanley
Tucci, to name just the top of the cast.
Directed by Tom McCarthy
(The
Station Agent, The
Visitor) and written by McCarthy and West
Wing alum Josh Singer, it's a
Hollywood movie that's really about something, the story of dedicated,
scrupulous reporters going up against a seemingly indomitable institution and
discovering a scandal beyond anything they imagined.
They started
investigating in 2001 and by the end of 2002, the Globe's
Spotlight team published nearly 600 stories about the Church and 249 priest and
brothers in the Boston archdiocese had been publicly accused of sexual abuse.
The archdiocese teetered at the edge of bankruptcy and in December, Bernard
Cardinal Law, Boston's archbishop, resigned (although he was transferred to
Rome's influential Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore).
What's more, the
filmmakers note, "major abuse scandals" have been discovered in more than 100
other American towns and in another 100 places worldwide. In the words of
producer Blye Pagon Faust, "Spotlight took on this institution that had power,
money and resources, and showed people that nobody is
untouchable."
Tom McCarthy was quick
to add, "I was raised Catholic so I have great understanding, admiration and
respect for the institution. This story is not about Church bashing. It's about
asking 'How does something like this happen?' The Church performed, and in some
cases continues to perform, acts of institutional evil not only as an abuser of
kids but also through the cover-up of abuse. How could this abuse go on for
decades without people standing up and saying something?"
The movie Spotlight is a celebration of investigative
journalism and a reminder that it could be a dying art. "I'm extremely concerned
with how little high-end investigative journalism is out there right now
compared to what we had 15 years ago," McCarthy said. "I saw this movie as an
opportunity to show by example: Here is the kind of impact that can happen when
you have well-funded journalism done by experienced professionals. I mean, what
could be more important than the fate of our children?"
When I asked McCarthy at
a recent screening of the film whether Spotlight may be more of a eulogy than a love letter,
he pointed out that among young people, the 1976 release of All
the President's Men, the movie version of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's
book on the Watergate affair, spurred renewed interest in journalism as a
career. He hopes Spotlight might have a similar
effect.
We both noted that
despite fewer investigative units at major metropolitan newspapers there are a
number of independent, non-profit organizations doing great work like
ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative
Reporting; such publications and websites as Mother
Jones, In
These Times andTruthout;
and reporters like Lee Fang at The
Intercept, David Sirota at International
Business Times, Ari Berman at The
Nation and Andy Kroll at National
Journal, to name just a few. Not to mention recent work like Matea Gold,
Tom Hamburger and Anu Narayanswamy's exhaustive digdown at The
Washington Post into four decades
of campaign and charitable contributions to Bill and Hillary
Clinton.
Of course, contributing
to the problem in this Internet age is the slashing of press revenues that fund
in-depth investigating, plus the sheer glut of information and data
unaccompanied by knowledge or wisdom. Tom McCarthy thinks the problem's
especially critical at the state and local level, where money for investigative
journalism is scarcest but where some of the worst corruption occurs in dark
corners unilluminated by the kind of reporting that makes Spotlight so
remarkable.
The slogan on the
movie's poster is, "Break the story. Break the silence." Journalist Ben Bradlee,
Jr., played in the film by John Slattery, told the Annenberg Media Center's NeonTommy blog, "The movie underscores the importance
of investigative journalism in a democracy." And in a recent interview at Salon,
Tom McCarthy said that this kind of reporting is, "so essential to a free and
healthy press in our country. The fact that it is eroding should really be a
great alarm to people, as much as the ice caps are eroding. We should be really
a bit worried about the state of journalism, and not just for the journalists
but for us, because that's who it will impact most."
He told another
interviewer, "I want to ring the bell about how essential this kind of
journalism is, because to me, these reporters are straight-up
heroes."
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