MASSACHUSETTS
Columbia Journalism Review
By Terry Ann Knopf
FEBRUARY 26, 2016
ONE OF THE BEST THINGS ABOUT SPOTLIGHT, Tom McCarthy’s acclaimed film about The Boston Globe’s investigation of the city’s clerical sex abuse scandal, is its integrity. Vying for six Academy Awards in Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, the film chronicles The Globe’s crucial role in bringing the issue of abuse to light and exposing Cardinal Bernard Law’s part in the cover-up. The film also points the finger at The Globe itself for having been so late in coming to the scandal. More than once in the film, a question is posed to the reporters: “What took you so long?”
But what about the other media outlets at the time? Where were Boston’s crackerjack TV stations—especially the two dominant ones, Channel 4 (WBZ-TV) and Channel 5 (WCVB-TV), which, for many years, were regarded as the two finest in the country? Where were all the TV reporters?
Dan Rea, a former TV reporter who covered the Church, was among the town’s most versatile and tenacious reporters during his 31-year career with WBZ-TV. Referring to the sex abuse scandal, he said: “In retrospect, we did not take action. We (reporters) circled the wagons.”
At its core, Boston was a little too small, too inbred and incestuous. Though hundreds of heinous crimes were committed by pedophile priests against innocent children over the years, there was a collective silence in Boston and throughout the state. People wouldn’t talk; the Church wouldn’t act; and the media, including local TV stations, were nowhere to be found.
Part of the problem was cultural. Sexual abuse was among the taboos people rarely talked about, in Boston or anywhere. The idea that a man of God would violate an innocent child was beyond belief. For the victims and their families, denial was often the only way of coping.
Simple numbers were another factor. Catholics have long since made up the state’s largest religious group—53 percent in 1980. And, while falling to 44.9 percent as of 2010 (the last time a religious census was taken), Catholics are still the majority religion in the state.
Then there was the Bernard Law factor. Arriving in Boston in 1984 to replace the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, Law proved a more dynamic and ambitious figure than his predecessor—not only as a religious leader, but as an influential member of the establishment, dining regularly with Billy Bulger, the powerful Massachusetts Senate president. But his ties went far beyond state politics. As WBUR-FM reporter David Boeri, who covered the Catholic Church for years, said: “Here was a Cardinal in Boston who had Karl Rove on his speed dial. He was really wired to Washington.” …
With the lack of urgency operating at so many levels, it wasn’t until May 7, 1992, that Joe Bergantino, head of the WBZ-TV’s investigative unit, became the first reporter to expose an ex-priest named James Porter. Bergantino’s exposé and follow-up reporting became Boston’s first pedophile priest legal case, the first of many, with Porter sentenced to 18 to 20 years in a maximum prison.
Bergantino, now retired from the nonprofit New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University, recently reflected on the media’s attitude of “see no evil, hear no evil” and, above all, “report no evil” at the time: “The Church was covered, in both print and television, the way we covered a sports team. When Rose Kennedy died, we brought in a priest to do the play-by-play at her Mass. The Church wasn’t covered the way we would cover the government … . And, because the Church was not transparent at the time, it was like covering the Kremlin.”
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