UNITED STATES
The National
Stephen Applebaum
December 13, 2015
Hailed by many as the best film about journalism since All the President’s Men, director/co-writer Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight grippingly and truthfully dramatises how a team of investigative reporters exposed decades of child abuse by Catholic priests in Massachusetts.
The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team published the first story on January 6, 2002 – but its impact was felt internationally.
The movie is a cris de coeur for a kind of local investigative reporting that is dying out, as newspaper publishers trim budgets and lay off staff – in many places, it is already dead.
“I might be wrong but I don’t think the general public fully understands just how dire this situation is, and how fundamental to our individual democracies a strong free press is,” says McCarthy.
He and fellow writer Josh Singer felt the best way to highlight the issue was to show “by example, in the extraordinary work done by the reporters and editors at the Boston Globe, and the courage of the survivors”.
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