Movie puts journalist in Spotlight

Michael Keaton (left) and the man he plays in Spotlight, Boston Globe investigative reporter and editor Walter V. Robinson.
Michael Keaton (left) and the man he plays in Spotlight, Boston Globe investigative reporter and editor Walter V. Robinson.

"I think most Hollywood films about journalism don't get it right," Walter V. "Robby" Robinson says. "Journalists are either superheroes, not quite like Clark Kent, or they're the scrum, shouting and running down the street after a celebrity."

Robinson, speaking by phone from Boston, where he's currently editor-at-large at The Boston Globe, ought to know. He's portrayed by Michael Keaton in Spotlight, the story of how the Globe's Spotlight investigative team won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for revealing the Catholic Church's extensive cover-up of sexual abuse of minors by priests. As for newspaper movies, Robinson admires the venerable All the President's Men and Ron Howard's The Paper, which also starred Keaton as a city editor (around the time Robinson held a similar job at the Globe). And he's happy with the film made about his team's 2001-02 investigation.

"We do come across as real people. The actors were very good at that," says Robinson. "It's not hard to de-glamorize me."

Spotlight removes the mystique some journalists have cultivated by showing scenes where reporters and editors grouse about who has more office space. Nonetheless, there's a reason the website for the Globe now features a special section that deals with the real investigation (bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/spotlight-movie).

Globe columnist Kevin Cullen, who contributed to the investigation, has criticized the film because it depicts Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn as being insufficiently concerned about the extent of the scandal. In a column for the Arizona Daily Star, Richard Gilman, who was publisher for the Globe at the time, wrote that Steve Kurkjian, not Spotlight team member Sacha Pfeiffer (played by Rachel McAdams in the film), landed the interview with a priest who freely admitted his crimes.

Hard Labor

Robinson points out that the filmmakers did extensive research on the events of 2001-02, even if they had to rearrange reality to fit a two-hour, eight-minute running time.

"Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy, who wrote the script, spent weeks and weeks interviewing us, drilling down to the smallest details. We gave them primary source materials, contemporaneous emails," he says.

"One of the emails was used almost verbatim in an important scene in the film. There's a scene where [then-Globe Editor] Marty Baron says, 'It's not enough to get evidence on one priest. We have to get the pattern and practice.' That meeting in real life, because it's obviously a dramatization, actually didn't take place, but the words coming out of Liev Schreiber's [who plays Baron] mouth were right out of an email that Marty Baron sent to me in August of 2001."

If viewers should think twice before taking what they see on the big screen as fact, Robinson says the film accurately reflects the challenges of getting survivors of the abuse to come forward. In real life, he covered the dubious career of the Rev. Paul Shanley and obtained candid testimony from the people he attacked.

"It took all the interviewing skills we thought we had developed over the years doing the type of interviews that investigative reporters do. We had to become much better listeners. We had to ask questions a lot differently and with more compassion. Very often people wouldn't tell us the story unless they trusted us. So sometimes it took a while to build that trust, as it should have. So, yes, it was very difficult to do. And it was obviously emotionally wrenching at times," says Robinson.

Robinson adds that the film reveals how difficult it can be to determine if a potential source is onto something, or on something. Early in the film, attorney Mitchell Garabedian comes off as an abrasive eccentric, but careful digging reveals he's not bluffing with his suit against the church.

"For all of us who dealt with [Garabedian], Stanley Tucci's performance is amazing," he says. "Mitch Garabedian is really like that. He's a very difficult individual to deal with. There are more difficult lawyers in town, but Mitch is near the top of the list, I'd say.

"But he was the guy who wouldn't go the private settlement route. He wanted this to come out. So, he filed his lawsuits right in court. The film tries to be fair in addressing this. The lawyers, their first obligation is to their client. In the civil suit, their obligation is to get their client the best settlement that they can.

"With one or two exceptions, lawyers who represented victims didn't have a good sense of the scope of the problem, how many priests were involved."

Robinson says the film reflects a unique factor that helped the Spotlight team understand and present the story. All four members of the team were raised Roman Catholic.

Hometown Values

"The benefit of our Catholic upbringing was that we kind of understood the culture," he says. "And it was easy for us to understand how readily priests would insert themselves into families in order to take advantage of children. Priests were like God in every parish I grew up in. To have a priest befriend a family and children was considered an honor. We understood that culture, and that helped us in our reporting."

On the other hand, Robinson says having the Jewish Baron, who now serves as editor of The Washington Post, at the helm was an important factor. Baron worked at The Miami Herald before taking over the Globe.

"It's a good lesson for any institution that too much inbreeding is a bad thing," says Robinson. "A fresh outside eye, in this case a pretty brilliant mind, was really good for a news organization, particularly when your editor comes from a state that has the best public records laws in the country."

Despite what he's accomplished, throughout the conversation, Robinson doesn't think he's mastered the profession. No one really can.

"Every story presents a different set of challenges. I try to take away from each story I do -- I haven't been doing many lately because I've sort of been in Movieland. I try to take lessons from each story I do that will hopefully make me better the next time. That's how we all grow," he says.

Robinson says that reporters have to be careful with stories like the ones he's covered. The recent film Truth depicts the backlash veteran reporter Dan Rather and 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes received when memos that indicated that future president George W. Bush had not fulfilled his duties at the Air National Guard were contested.

Robinson says that Mapes and Rather had done fine work, but their trust in the memos was misplaced.

He should know.

Having served for four years in the Army in Vietnam and having covered Bush's military career for the Globe, he understands the consequences of bungling the story.

"I have dealt with document authentication in the past. And the first thing you learn is that it's an art, not a science. The second thing you learn is that if you don't have the original document, it's really hard. If it's a copy, it's even harder," he says.

Keeping Up the Fight

From listening to Robinson on the phone, it's obvious he's gotten where he is through persistence. When asked about the challenges of handling a barn-burner of a story like the one that won him a Pulitzer, he replies, "The barn is still burning."

"Many changes have been made by the church, but most people who've been following this case -- particularly those in the survivor community -- believe the church in the United States has not done nearly enough. The often-overlooked fact is that outside of the United States, in most other countries, priests who abuse children, are still routinely returned to duty. In many other countries, there's been no enforcement at all, particularly in some Latin American countries where the church and the state are indistinguishable from one another."

He also warns that newspapers and communities will lose out if editors cut back on investigative teams like Spotlight.

"One thing, I'll say, and this is me scolding editors, editors who cut investigative reporting are being penny wise and pound foolish because when you do readership surveys and you ask people what's most important to them in their newspaper, the biggest response is almost always investigative reporting," he says. "Yes, it's expensive to do, but it's what keeps readers buying the newspaper."

MovieStyle on 12/04/2015

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