The Ethics concerning Spotlight

After watching Good Night, and Good Luck I was reminded of a paper I wrote detailing the ethical elements of the movie Spotlight. The film follows an investigative journalism team that works tirelessly to uncover the scandals hidden within the Catholic Church. I broke down the Society of Professional Journalist Code of Ethics to showcase the Spotlight team's approach to ethics during their reporting.
This is what I found:


The movie Spotlight features a Boston Globe team that covers investigative journalism for the news outlet. The team is under a new editor, Marty Baron, who prompts a story surrounding a Catholic priest, John Geoghan,accused of child molestation. After deciding to follow the accusations, the team ends up uncovering much more than they ever expected and develop a bigger picture story for publication. Following reporters Michael Rezendes, Matt Carroll, Sacha Pfeiffer, and their Spotlight editor Robby Robinson the plot details the interviews that take place with victims and people in power who have hidden the information to expose the corruption within the Catholic Church.

The ethics of the events and individuals featured within this movie deal explicitly with The Society of Professional Journalist’s Code of Ethics (SPJ). This is due to the Boston Globe being a publication which falls under this code and therefore the employees being classified as journalists. There were a lot of moving parts within the movie that contributed to the ethical implications present that are backed by the SPJ Code of Ethics, while also favoring the Teleological Ethical Theory. 

The opening of the SPJ Code of Ethics features a line which entails the basis of the reasoning each reporter chose to publish the exposé of corrupt priests within Boston. This line statesthat “Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” Each individual worked tirelessly to uncover accurate recounts from multiple victims to ensure that the information they were sharing with the public was truthful. This opening also highlights the idea that journalists must provide an account of issues – the reporters found the molesting of children by a priest to be rampant within Boston and hidden by those within the Church, which made the entire case a systematic issue that the public had the right to know about. 

The need to “Seek the Truth” is a prominent aspect of the SPJ code and there are multiple aspects of the portion that apply to the reporter’s actions within Spotlight. The victims of the various priests are the people that these reporters are giving a voice to; therefore, enacting the ideal to “give voice to the voiceless.” Each victim felt ashamed and alone with the events that had occurred when in reality the Spotlight column brought to light that over eighty priests within the Boston area had each molested multiple victims individually. Additionally, the code states that journalists must “recognize a special obligation to ensure that the public’s business is conducted in the open and that government records are open to inspection,” which applied to Spotlightand the work that was conducted. Rezendes, one of the reporters, deducted that documents that were supposed to be open for public record had been confiscated by the Catholic Church in order to ensure that no one knew what had occurred with John Geoghan, which the Cardinal Law knew about and repeatedly covered up. 

These complex issues with esteemed individuals within the church transition the conversation to the next division of the SPJ Code of Ethics which entails journalist’s duty to minimize harm. Obviously, by bringing light to the wrongdoings occurring within the Catholic church there were going to be many priests highlighted in a negative connotation. In order to “show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage,” the Spotlight team reached out to Cardinal Law prior to publication of the exposing article and yet he chose to go on the record without comment. 

In terms of acting independently, the reporters had no agenda and had no obligations except for informing the public. The code states that ethically reporters should “be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.” This aspect of the code is very applicable to Spotlight due to the fact that the entire purpose of the article published was to hold the Catholic church to the wrongdoings that had been so vastly and vigorously covered up for so long. This powerhouse had also been supported by the power of the law as lawyers acted on the side of the church to quietly dismiss the issues, and the reporters used these individuals as sources against the priests in order to present an accurate case against them with more than just victim narrations.

Finally, the SPJ code calls for journalists to be accountable not only to their audience, but also to themselves. The Spotlight Globe team was made up of three reporters and an editor who then reported to two other editors in a higher position. When reporter Rezendes felt he should publish the article with the information he had already collected, there was a team of people who held him accountable to complete the story at the fullest capacity possible, which in turn was for the greater good of the population. The Spotlight team also allowed for open phone lines upon publishing the article to allow for readers to comment and reflect on their work which in turn brought forth an ample amount of victims who had never spoken out before, yet added credibility and impact to the work they had just completed. 

Overall the film seemed to fall under the Teleological Ethical Theory in terms of the rationalization the reporters and editors used throughout their work with the story. This mega-theory is also known as the consequence-related theory due to the fact that the decisions made by the individuals involved typically searches for the outcome that will affect the greater good. In terms of Spotlight, when analyzing the consequences related to the priests and the Catholic church as a whole once the article was published, it was worth the fact that hundreds (which ended up actually being thousands) of victims would be given recognition; which inevitably was awareness that would shut down the corrupt process in general, saving thousands more. 

While it was inevitable that the publication was ethical in their article, there were a few moments where unethical framework was also present. It was noted by many of the Spotlight sources that their groundbreaking information had been given to the Boston Globe years prior to their work on the current article. One victim had sent all the outspoken victims and their stories, along with proof, to the Globe five years prior, and yet they had denied the story and ignored the evidence. This victim had also presented a source who had devoted a majority of his life to studying the “treatment centers” that contained priests who had been caught in their corruption, and later moved to a new parish. Along with victims, a lawyer that had represented twenty of the guilty priests had sent the extensive list of predator priests to the Globe, which was quickly dismissed with no follow-up. Another semi-suspicious portion of the film was the fact that the reporters working on the case had all been a part of the Catholic church at some point in their life, yet no longer followed in that faith. Throughout the film you find that these individuals do stay objective in the field and do not let their pasts effect the way in which they investigate or report on the issue at hand.

In conclusion, the publication of the Catholic priests’ abuse was ethical mainly because it contributed to the well-being of the greater good. The entire purpose of a journalist is to bring light to matters that affect the public and that is exactly what the Spotlight article did. The reporters worked extensively to include multiple, credible sources and documents which fully backed the claims presented.