MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald
Jack Encarnacao Thursday, November 26, 2015
Two Boston Globe reporters depicted in the new Hollywood flick “Spotlight” broke their silence last night, saying the movie accurately portrays a Boston College spokesman’s stance during the paper’s investigation of the archdiocese clergy sex abuse scandal.
That spokesman, Jack Dunn, is demanding a scene be removed of his character trying to minimize the church abuse story.
In a joint statement, the Globe’s Walter Robinson and Sacha Pfeiffer said the scene captures Dunn’s “spirited public relations defense of BC High during our first sit-down interview at the school in early 2002.”
“Both of us were there for the interview, and we consider the scene faithful to what happened,” the statement reads. “The scene depicts a fairly common exchange involving reporters who have unpleasant questions to ask and a skilled public relations person doing his best to frame a story in the most favorable way possible for the institution he is representing. That’s what Jack did that day.”
A lawyer for “Spotlight,” Alonzo Wickers IV, wrote that the scene in question was derived from an interview screenwriter Josh Singer conducted with Robinson, in which Robinson recalled Dunn saying he couldn’t imagine past BC High administrators would know about sexual offenses made by the Rev. James Talbot.
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