UNITED STATES
Jewish Journal
by Naomi Pfefferman
“Marty belongs in the pantheon of great Jewish heroes,” Josh Singer, a co-writer of the Oscar-nominated film “Spotlight,” said during a recent interview at a Santa Monica coffee house.
He was discussing the real-life newsman at the center of the much-lauded film about how Boston Globe reporters exposed a conspiracy of silence about pedophile priests some 15 years ago.
Martin Baron, then the Globe’s brand-new editor, seems rather stiff and hardly heroic as he attends a meeting with the newspaper’s investigative team on his first day of work in 2001.
To be sure, it’s not the most welcoming environment for this former editor of the Miami Herald. Boston’s media had already pointedly noted that Baron – who in real life is now executive editor of the Washington Post – was to become the first Jewish editor at a publication whose readers were 53 percent Catholic, while Baron’s reporters on the Globe’s investigative team all were raised Catholic. And one character remarks that not only was the new editor coming from Florida, he was also an “unmarried man from the Jewish faith who hates baseball” in a town obsessed with the Red Sox. Later in the film, a church leader insinuates that Baron is a meddling outsider as he gives the editor a copy of the church’s Catechism, advising him to “think of it as the Cardinal’s guide to Boston.”
Unabashed, the reserved but intense Baron (played by Liev Schreiber) tells his reporters he wants them to look into the highest echelons of the church, because he’s noted a news item about a priest accused of child abuse. He wants to see if there’s more to the story.
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