About a month ago, I sat in the second row of an auditorium of the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles at a professional journalism conference. The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team from the Boston Globe was on the stage in front of me. Superheroes who had pens and paper instead of capes.
The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight Team” exposed how the Boston Catholic Archdiocese covered up the pedophilia and sexual abuse of children by an estimated 200 priests. Their reporting won them the 2003 Pulitzer Prize and prompted revelations of similar abuse at parishes around the country and internationally.
Last week, I settled in to watch “Spotlight,” the new movie made based on the work of those journalists I saw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg5zSVxx9JM
Instead of overdramatizing the way events played out, the movie depicted reporters doing their jobs. Back in Los Angeles, Sacha Pfeiffer had shared with us that Rachel McAdams had shadowed her, asking her everything from how she phrased interview questions to the length of her fingernails.
I didn’t feel like I was watching McAdams — McAdams became badass reporter Sacha Pfeiffer. The audience was a fly on the wall of the newsroom.
For me, it was surreal that I got to meet the actual journalists who shattered the secrecy that protected pedophiles who exploited the trust that children had in them.
I haven’t always known I wanted to be a journalist, at one point I thought I wanted to be a plastic surgeon, but as I watched, drinking coffee between my two best friends, one that could be the next member of a Spotlight Team, and the other a future professional athlete, I was reminded that storytelling does make a difference.
I was reminded just how much reporting matters. I was moved by the movie on two fronts. I was moved because I am a survivor of sexual abuse, not by a system, but a survivor nonetheless.
I was also reminded that stories matter and being tried in the court of public opinion can bring at least a little justice to those that need it. Who knows how many future crimes the Spotlight Team prevented with its investigation?
I sent off my internship application to the Boston Globe in the same week.
Malika Andrews is the sports editor for The Beacon. She can be reached at andrewsm17@up.edu or on Twitter @malika_andrews.
