Spotlight

Christine Jean-Baptiste
Film Analysis 3
Spotlight
The film Spotlight is about one of The Boston Globe editors who goes by name of Marty Baron. He assigns a group of journalists to investigate allegations against John Geoghan, a priest who’s accused of molesting over 80 boys. Some of the reporters such ass Matt Carroll and Sacha Pfeiffer interview victims and goes unto making the attempt to open up sensitive documents. The reporters make it their duty to take charge and to find proof of a cover-up of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church. This film discusses the communication style and the media.
Spotlight displays an impressive investigative reporting unit. They would spend months a time for s single that they choose between themselves as a group and they are only needing to report to their superiors. As a rule, they are not to discuss their work with anyone else, which includes family, friends and other staff at the newspaper. Spotlight shows there group effort in communication by portraying a nominal group technique. “NGT call for group members to generate their initial ideas silently and independently and then combine them and consider them as a group.” Baron wanted the group to do a story by a fellow Globe columnist Eileen McNamara, who reported about sexual abuse allegations of a Catholic priest against a minor, and what appears to be the cover-up by Cardinal Bernard Law, the Archdiocese of Boston.
Although the group were a bit hesitant at first to work on the story they decided to start their investigation process. Their first and important task is to see if they can have some court documents on the case unsealed. Which means possibly suing the Catholic Church, which is not easy thing to do. Moreover, Robby and the rest of his team when out to talk to lawyers who have been working on alleged sex abuse cases committed by Catholic priests in Boston. They also went on to talk to sex abuse survivors.
During their investigation, they got some information that it wasn’t just one priest who was the problem but over 90 priests. The system was problematic and they also discovered that the Archdiocese not only covered up the abuse but they did doing nothing to stop it and showed that they condone it. Their ultimate goal was not the end product of an important story but to make sure that another major local newspaper did not beat them to their outline. Through it all, they may come to some unpleasant realizations that not only the Archdiocese and the Catholic Church in general are to blame for what happened. In chapter 17 it states that “one of the first printed media to reach a large audience was the newspaper.” Eventually Boston Global printed out the story and their office were busy with phone calls from sex abuse victims.
In conclusion, the true story of how the Boston Globe had uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core. They used their impressive investigation unit by doing group and individual reporting which was mention in the communications book. They even went out to investigate and interview lawyers as well abuse survival victims.