A Hollywood Reminder of Tough - and Scarce - Journalism

By Gary Mason
The Globe and Mail
December 10, 2015

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/a-hollywood-reminder-of-tough---and-scarce---journalism/article27688143/

There’s a scene in the movie Spotlight in which a reporter played by actor Mark Ruffalo is arguing with his editor about why their newspaper, The Boston Globe, should publish the explosive story they’ve been working on rather than hold it for further corroboration.

“This is not just Boston,” says Mr. Ruffalo, referring to the vast tentacles of sexual abuse the paper has uncovered. “This is the whole country, the whole world. They [the Catholic Church] knew and they let it happen. It could’ve been you, it could have been me. It could have been any of us.”

It’s one of many moments in the film that gave me shivers. If you haven’t seen Spotlight, you should. It’s the true story of The Boston Globe’s groundbreaking probe of child abuse by priests in the Boston Catholic church. The reporting was carried out by the paper’s investigation unit called Spotlight and earned The Boston Globe a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. The expose did nothing less than blow the lid off the far-reaching network of sexual abuse that had been going on in the church for decades. The stories also revealed the institutional corruption that existed in the church hierarchy that allowed it all to happen.

I consider myself as lucky as Michael Rezendes, the Catholic and Boston-raised Globe reporter whom Mr. Ruffalo depicts in movie. I, too, grew up Catholic and regarded the priest I assisted each morning as an altar boy akin to God. I eventually grew out of my devotion to black robes and morning mass and escaped from that period of my life relatively unscathed. Others weren’t so fortunate. One of the priests I regularly served mass with was a pedophile. He would be convicted on three counts of gross indecency involving minors but likely hurt far, far more children than that.

It could have been me. It could have been any of us.

My emotional connection to the subject matter is undoubtedly one of the reasons I feel so passionately about this film. But surely another is its depiction of everything that is good about journalism.

As movies go, Spotlight is a fairly un-Hollywoodized look at the news business, and the often unglamorous and tedious work that goes into investigative work. But it also accurately reflects the enormous amount of time and resources that are needed to take on big, complicated subjects that are often hard to crack. And the discouraging reality is those resources are shrinking across the journalism industry every day.

I know there are many who cheer the demise of mainstream media. But I wonder how many understand what is really happening here; what society is losing as reporting staffs in local newspapers as well as radio and television stations continue to shrivel and endeavours such as “investigative journalism” become luxuries that only large, established news organizations such as The Globe and Mail enjoy – for now.

What we are losing, and have already lost in many cases, is significant. Taking on an institution as powerful and well-funded as the Catholic Church takes enormous courage not to mention financial means. Many news organizations today can’t afford high-priced libel lawyers so shy away from stories that might cause them legal grief.

Smaller newspapers, so worried about their bottom lines, are often hesitant to print anything that might alienate an advertiser. Few newsrooms today can say to four reporters, as The Boston Globe did, take a year to look into this. But often that’s what it takes to break a story the size of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal or the Missing and Murdered Woman phenomenon or the upsurge in suicides in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Ultimately, Spotlight is a story about loss; the loss, certainly, that the victims of abuse suffered at the hands of people they trusted the most, but also the loss of the kind of exhausting, gumshoe-style reporting that is impactful and improves our world in big and small ways. When asked about this, the film’s director, Tom McCarthy, said: “I’m not sure those who will see the movie will say: ‘Wow that barely exists any more.’ They’re not going to know that it’s too late. The ice caps have melted. These papers are gone; they’re decimated.”

They’re not all gone. But there has been enough of a retreat already to unalterably affect the reality of our times.