Journalism in the Community: Spotlight (Movie Review Sample)

The task was to review a movie "Spotlight" released in September 2015.
Spotlight is an American drama film written by Josh Singer and directed by Tom McCarthy. It was released on 3rd September 2015, in Venice. The film is borrowed from The Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team, one of the oldest newspapers in investigative journalism in the United States that investigate public interest cases. The "Spotlight" team investigates an allegation of abuse in the Catholic Church. The group carries out a year-long investigation that uncovers a mysterious cover-up of Catholic priests' massive scandal of child abuse and molestation (Atiyas et al., 2018).
It begins at a police station in Boston in 1976, where two police officers discuss the arrest of a Catholic priest in connection with a case of child molestation. A high-ranking cleric plans and goes to talk with the mothers of the children allegedly molested. An Assistant District Attorney is seen entering the police station and asking the policemen not to disclose anything about the case to the media. The priest is then released from police custody, and the case hashed up.
In 2001, The Boston Globe newspaper hired a new managing editor meets who directs the "Spotlight" investigative team leader and his team to investigate a case of interest after a renowned lawyer had alleged that a Cardinal Archbishop of Boston knew the priest abusing children sexually. As a Catholic leader in Boston, he had done nothing to address the case. The Boston Globe editor urges the "Spotlight" team to investigate the matter and leave no stone unturned. One of the "Spotlight" team journalists’ contacts the lawyer who made the allegation to schedule an interview, but the lawyer declines to be interviewed (Callaghan, 2017). However, the lawyer later talks after the journalist reveals that he is a "Spotlight" team member.
At first, the "Spotlight" team believed they were following on a story of a single priest who had been moved around severally. Still, they came to uncover a pattern of sexual abuses by other priests in Massachusetts, and Boston Archbishop has covered it all up. Through the head of the victims' rights group called Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the "Spotlight" team is encouraged to widen their scope to around thirteen priests. A former priest who had done his research and was working to rehabilitate sexually abusive priests suggested that his findings pointed out that there were around 6% of the total priesthood were offensive in Boston; this translated to about 90 priests (Atiyas et al., 2018). The research was later validated by the "Spotlight" team, who managed to come up with a list of 87 names of priests who allegedly have sexually abused children; the team began a mission to find victims so as to back up their suspicions.