UNITED STATES
TCPalm
By Paul Janensch
My choice for best picture of 2015 is “Spotlight.”
This extraordinary movie shows us how reporters and editors at The Boston Globe exposed the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in the Boston area.
We’ll find out if it wins the Oscar for best picture when ABC brings us the Academy Awards at 8:30 p.m. Sunday.
I was the editor of another newspaper that informed the public of sexual abuse by priests. More on that angle later.
“Spotlight” already has won a number of awards after receiving rave reviews. Even the Catholic News Service called it “illuminating.”
The movie takes its name from the Globe’s Spotlight investigative team, which began looking into sex-abuse cases in 2001 under then new editor Martin Baron and despite the opposition of Cardinal Bernard Law, who covered up the scandal.
Not only a gripping drama, “Spotlight” is the most accurate movie portrayal of how good journalists do their work since “All the President’s Men.” …
Ten years before the Globe’s disclosures, I was the new editor of the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Massachusetts, west of Boston.
Soon after I started, I learned that priests in the Worcester diocese had sexually abused minors but the offenses were kept secret. We started investigating.
Men who said they had been victims as boys consented to be interviewed. They asked not to be named. I already had established a policy that anyone quoted in a staff-written story must be named and persuaded the men to let us identify them.
We published several stories about such cases on Page 1 under restrained headlines.
A monsignor who was executive assistant to the bishop called me to say that I, a Mass-going Catholic, was a disgrace to the church.
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