We were pleased that former Boston Globe Deputy Managing Editor Ben Bradlee Jr was able to talk about the journalism that made the Academy Award winning film “Spotlight”
In an era where newspapers are cutting back on their pages and where articles are little more than aggregates of wire service stories, The Spotlight team at The Boston Globe is thrust to even a greater importance because of their ability to mass great resources to focus—for a great deal of time– on a single story.
That type of long form journalism is a throw-back to a time where people devoured news print by the column inch because that was the source of their information.
The Spotlight team at The Boston Globe is the oldest continuously operated print-based investigative team in the United States, having broken open many stories that would never have been the light of day.
The scandal within the Catholic Church, where generations of Cardinals has simply transferred sexually abusive priests from one parish to another—with the explicit assent of the church hierarchy—was a sin that screamed from the heavens. However, perhaps because of the power of the Catholic Church in Boston—along with the notion that the vulnerable and abused would never be believed—an open secret operated in plain sight.
The horrible behavior of Father John J. Geoghan, who left a trail of sexual depravity throughout New England, served as the poster child for a problem that extended far beyond the Boston Diocese. In 2003, Geoghan would be killed by a white supremacist who wanted him as a “trophy.”
However, if fell to a band of reporters at the Boston Globe—those who were part of The Spotlight Team—to not only sort of the fact that troubled priests were moved around from parish to parish, but to also prove that it was done with the full knowledge of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law, who would essentially flee to The Vatican where he served out his retirement out of reach from Boston law enforcement.
The Luncheon Society 