If you think back over Oscar history and wonder why no films about journalists have ever won Best Picture, it suddenly becomes all too clear how much things have changed. When journalists were heroes the world was a better place. Watching how the press covers Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is proof that objectivity in journalism has been replaced by survival clickbait journalism, where bringing down a powerful woman and elevating a scrappy underdog becomes the narrative because that’s what sells.
This is true on network television, but it’s even more true online. When you have biased leftist outlets like Huffington Post or Salon, extreme right wing sites like The Blaze or Daily Caller, and mainstream trustworthy sites like The New York Times all painting basically the same hot-button headlines, you long for the days when journalists were respected and respectable. I’m not seeing much of that anymore. I’m seeing outlets that feed the mob to get clicks.
It is now more than ever that a film like Spotlight has relevance. Those Boston Globe reporters had the option of going off half-cocked, before having all of the information firmly in hand. Instead, they carefully and meticulously set about getting the story right and making it complete, asking the hard questions about molestation, building relationships with sources, questioning themselves and vetting their own coverage, all in the name of ethics. That is something we are sorely missing across-the-board now: yes, even at The New York Times, especially at The Los Angeles Times. Forget TIME magazine, and CNN you can shitcan too. Forget it. A mob of online clicktivists seem to be in control of our media and I personally have never longed more for a better firewall of journalistic ethics. We’ve also lost our two most trenchant media critics — Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It turns out they were sort of irreplaceable. Bill Maher has become so biased in his own coverage that he, too, has become unreliable. Where are we to turn?
In Spotlight, Tom McCarthy reminds us what honorable journalists really are and what they aren’t. They are there to serve the public good, not to profit off its worst instincts. They are there to find the truth — the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They are there to get both sides of the story. They are there not to be bought off or to score brownie points. They are there not to be influenced by the corporations that own them. The one thing that they aren’t? They aren’t the story.
With his team of self-effacing actors who refuse to draw attention away from what’s important, writer/director McCarthy leads us down a careful path of discovery. What did the Boston Globe know and when did they know it? What did the courts know and when did they know it? And most importantly, what did the Catholic Church hierarchy know and when did they know it?
Many journalism films in the past warned of the future we now inhabit. Sidney Lumet’s Network was so dead on, as was James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News. If you watch those movies now you can’t imagine that we were once so self-aware that anyone ever actually considered ethics in journalism. All the President’s Men was made at a time when investigative journalists really were heroes.
That respect and vigilance is mostly gone now. The changing economics of ad revenue have forced formerly respectable outlets to follow the formula of clickbait crap like The Huffington Post. Such a major outlet with such a huge readership — you have to worry whose side they are on and you have feel discouraged that nothing can be done about it. One reason why is that any protestations against them does nothing but give them more clicks — so they’re making money either way — whether investing in posting untrue, hysteria-driven headlines or headlines about issues that really do matter. It is all in the name of financial self-preservation. And what a shame that is.
If The Big Short winning Best Picture will send a message to our government about the crooks on Wall Street, Spotlight winning will send a message to our media that says, “Shape up.” Unfortunately, you know and I know that winning an Oscar means very little to the big picture. When The Cove won the Best Documentary Oscar, that didn’t mean they stopped killing dolphins in the cove. A Spotlight victory can’t and won’t turn journalism back to what it once was — that’s sadly a relic of a more honest past. A win for The Big Short won’t make anyone in government regulate Wall Street; in fact, Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the worst of what led to the 2008 collapse anyway. Still, a consensus vote by a prominent group of taste-makers s a consensus vote. It doesn’t mean everything but it doesn’t mean nothing.
That’s just part of what drives the case for Spotlight. The other part is the idea that the film gives a voice to victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests, abuse which was then covered up by high officials of the Catholic Church. We’ve seen this subject examined before, in films like Doubt and Deliver Us From Evil, for instance, but no feature film has ever really shown the sinister level of an actual cover-up before Spotlight. Santa Barbara Film Festival’s Roger Durling wrote an op-ed for The Hollywood Reporter about his own abuse suffered at the hands of a priest:
I feared the idea of watching Spotlight, but as the credits rolled, there was an incredible feeling of cathartic liberation. I sat in the theater realizing that I was not invisible anymore. I had seen victims of priest child abuse portrayed on the screen with the utmost sympathy.
When I was a young boy, I myself became a victim of abuse by a priest in Panama, where I was born. I rarely discuss it publicly, but it’s been a painful journey of healing and coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault. I’m a survivor. I’ve been lucky. I know victims who have become drug addicts, who have turned to prostitution or — worse — who have committed suicide. For many years, I compartmentalized my struggle. I had completely erased the events from my history. Sadly, the trauma remained. I couldn’t be intimate. I hated my body and the way I looked. I washed my hands compulsively. Being a gay man made me an easy prey to my oppressor, and for close to 30 years I struggled with the idea that my sexuality was to blame for my instability.
Movies saved my life and gave me purpose. My abuse had made me feel that I wasn’t good enough for anything, that ultimately I would fail at whatever I set out to do. I got a graduate degree from Columbia University, but I didn’t believe in myself enough to capitalize on my education. After school, I attempted to be a writer, but I didn’t push myself as hard as I should have. I feared rejection too much. I would accept jobs with abusive bosses because that’s the way I felt most comfortable. My only solace was movies. In the dark, among fellow cinephiles, I didn’t feel disfigured. I could look Hannibal Lecter in the face — and I was fearless.
Durling ends by saying this:
That’s the power of movies, isn’t it? They can help us come to terms with our past and also have the power to give a voice to people like me who used to feel utterly anchorless and alone.
That is absolutely the power of movies. When I first saw Spotlight in Telluride, I was seated next to an old-timer and his wife. Before the movie started, we’d been chatting about what was good so far, what they liked and didn’t like. They seemed contented, happy people. After Spotlight, the man next to me burst into tears. He cried — really really really cried — for a full five minutes with his wife patting his back. I remember thinking it must have really hit home for him. I suspect it hits home for many generations of abused victims whose tender lives were entrusted to an institution that promised to protect them but did quite the opposite.