Thursday, February 25, 2016

“Spotlight”: journalism as a good deed – ZEIT ONLINE

“The city flourished when its major institutions work closely together,” says the Archbishop to the new editor of the Boston Globe , which just completed its inaugural visit to the Supreme Shepherd of the greater community , But Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) shakes embrace politely and recalls that a newspaper should stand on its own. Baron’s new in Boston and hates as unmarried Jew, baseball, an outsider in the deeply influenced by Catholicism City. This outside perspective is it that directs his attention to something that everyone else does not see. Or do not want to see: the sexual abuse by a Catholic priest. In the first editorial meeting Baron is a research team on the case, which was discussed in the local press merely as an edge message. Three men and one woman working in the so-called Spotlight editorial in which investigative journalists often buried for several months in a story, and this time to dig a scandal that will not only shake Boston.

In 2002, published the Boston Globe a series of articles, which proved unfounded, that more than seventy clergymen sexually abused their charges in the Diocese of Boston for decades had. And not only this, but also that these cases have been systematically covered up by the Catholic Church. Nearly 600 articles printed the Globe total on this subject and triggered by the fact a public debate throughout the United States, which resulted in up to 2012 a total of 6,275 Catholic priests were indicted on minors of sexual assault.

In his journalists thriller Spotlight reconstructs the director Tom McCarthy ( the station Agent ) now uncovering this abuse scandal and thereby develops just the right narrative, which finds the necessary respect for the victims, but also the meticulous research work, the reporter with a subtle tension in sets scene. This is him now maybe even an Oscar contribute.

Anders about as in genre classics like Alan J. Pakula’s The Untouchables are (1976) journalists in Spotlight no heroes of truth, but – all grew up catholic – even entangled in the power network of the city and the mechanisms of looking away. In this film there is no heroic protagonists, but a group of equal characters that explore the extent and classification of crimes, starting from a case. The thoroughness, put the reporter in her research to the day, here reflected in an almost anthropological accuracy with which McCarthy the milieu and the daily work of the newspaper publisher holds the picture.

The head of the Spotlight editors Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) is part of the Catholic establishment of the city, play with the right people Golf and is well connected with the institutions of power. In the nineties, he had, but was not pursued as a local chef ever an abuse case on the table. His conscience is the driving force of research. With sensitivity and empathy interviewed Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), the abuse victims who entrust their experiences through which they have never talked. My colleague Matt Carroll (Brian D’Arcy James) scoured the archives meticulously, while the experienced reporter Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) with incorruptible tenacity bites in the case. It is the journalistic legwork from door to door and between the acts shelves of dishes, created by the relationships and the monstrous dimension of the scandal gradually opens up.

Its voltage refers Spotlight from a restrained narrative, the dramatic moments not manipulative overridden, but the figures – and the audience – emotional development spaces can. In its sustainable unobtrusive nature of the film seems like a bit of time – and thus runs synchronously to the old-school journalism, operate their protagonists. Because of course is Spotlight is not only a film about the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, but also a form of investigative journalism, which is now threatened with extinction. For almost a year four reporters have been working on this story (and were awarded the Pulitzer Prize). Which newspaper will still make such a research effort in the crisis of print media? Good journalism costs money and requires a lot of patience, to the Twitter age barely a can muster and wants. Even showing this film in your society-changing effect could the products of the Boston Globe only reason unfold because the editor prevented a premature release and held a few individual cases, the system would discover behind it.

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