UNITED STATES
South China Morning Post
Story based on the Boston Globe investigation that uncovered the facilitation of child abuse by the Catholic Church dissects the news media’s watchdog role, writes Roy J. Harris Jnr
The best lessons about how journalists work come from seeing them in action. And no film has ever done a better job than Spotlight of showing reporters and editors in their “watchdog” role: digging out important news that others want kept secret.
The film tells the story of four members of The Boston Globe’s investigative unit, the Spotlight team, and follows what happens after the newspaper’s editor, on his first day on the job, in 2001, tasks them with looking into the case of a defrocked Catholic priest who had been repeatedly accused of sexually abusing children in his care. This leads them to investigate whether church leaders in Boston, in the northeastern United States, knew about the abuse by that priest and by others – and protected them by quietly transferring them to new parishes, where they were free to harm other children.
Because the Globe did its job so well – eventually documenting shockingly widespread abuses by priests and the cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese of a pervasive problem – Spotlight offers many lessons about the way news organisations can have a positive impact in their communities and beyond. (The Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003 for this work.) It is also rich in news literacy teachable moments.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.