Spotlight
Boston, MA 1976
Investigative Team at the Boston Globe
- Investing cases of child sex abuse in Boston by Catholic Priests
- “We like to spend a year or more investigating once we start a project”
- Focused on a way to make the paper essential to its readers
Marty Baron (new editor hire)
- He sees the issue of sexual abuse from priests
- Can we ask a judge to unseal documents?
- He has faith that this will be a good story and sort of gets shut down when he suggests the importance of this topic
Mark Ruffolo (writes the stories)
“53% of our subscribers are catholic”… the publisher is thinking about the money as a business man and asks Marty Baron if it is really that important
Walter Robinson – Editor of the papers “Spotlight” team
Mitchell Garabedian – Lawyer who dealt with a case having to do with a priest molesting children
- He will not allow Michael Rezendes to record the convo in any way shape or form and isn’t willing to help at all.
- Says the church is watching him closely
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- Interviews priest, and he said “if I can be of any help, don’t be afraid to ask.”
- Many ways to control the press
- Diplomatic conversation about subject is the one used with the priest
- This movie shows: How difficult the truth is to come by
- “This is not just physical abuse, this is spiritual abuse too”
- “When a priest does this to you, he robs you of your faith too”
- When priests get caught they get sent to treatment centers
- Reporting technique: asking for help
- He asks for help and says he’s working for spotlight and this gets him a meeting with him. Almost like he knows it’s for a good cause
- Reporting technique: saying people need to know what actually happened to get more information.
- This gives the person a reason to get their story out for awareness or other personal reasons
- Technique: digging deeper.. Keep asking questions that lead to the next question. Also can get you more contacts to dig deeper
- Technique: contact anyone related to the topic. Get as much information as you can from everyone because one thing leads to another which leads to more information.
- Robby asks the priest if it could be over 90 and he replies with, “you gotta stop this Robby”
- Technique: They confront a lawyer in person in public.
- They threaten the lawyer about writing a story about lawyers who hide priests who have molested children.
- Mike starts to question Ben (his boss) on things because he seemed to know something and was getting defensive
- Female detective showed up at priests home and he says he fooled around with little boys like it was totally normal. But he said he wouldn’t ever rape any of them because he was raped. Then his sister came and got angry and made her leave.
- He finds out the catholic church removed legal public documents from the Lawyer
- This is a result from the relationship he built with him and not giving up on getting information from him.
- He goes to the court house and finds legal documents missing
- Technique for reporting: Relating to the person you interview to get them to tell you things because they feel like they relate to you
- Robby uses this while interviewing someone and talking about sports
- Technique: Finding legal documents and studying these and find out anything you can
- Mike did this after finding out about legal documents through the Lawyer
- He finds proof and wants to publish it immediately
- Mike feels so passionately about the topic and what he does that he will almost do anything or risk his job for it.
- Robby confronts the bad guy about defending the priests
- After it is published, the next morning the phones are off the hook with people saying they were abused
- 249 priests and brothers were publicly accused
- More abuse in hundreds of cities throughout the US
- We sometimes fail and kind of facilitate and enable abuse
- I think we can do better
- What’s the follow?
- Wants to see the church
- Dedicating resources
- Topple conventional wisdom
- The church thinks in centuries
- Knowledge is one thing but faith is another (knowledge/faith)
- The meddlers outside
Journalism, Law, & Ethics 