CANADA
Metro News
By: Rosemary Westwood Metro Published on Mon Feb 29 2016
One well trodden story, about good people whose inaction clears a path for evil, won an Oscar on Sunday night.
Spotlight, the tale of how Boston Globe reporters broke a Catholic-priest sexual-abuse scandal, took home the best picture award, highlighting the need for such costly reportage just as media companies cut jobs.
The film charts the journalists’ triumphs, but also underscores how many people looked the other way for so long. Priests, cardinals, the Vatican; members of Boston’s Catholic community, lawyers, judges; even Globe journalists, who had been sitting on stories of priest abuse for years without much follow-up.
It’s particularly ironic, then, that when I went to see Spotlight, it was by accident. I was even dreading it. We wanted light fun, but we arrived too late. As a Catholic, I shrunk from yet another story of horrific abuse and the institution that, in effect, condoned it.
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