SINGAPORE
The Straits Times
Lydia Lim
Associate Opinion Editor
PUBLISHED MAR 27, 2016
In a culture of consumption, the idea of service to something greater than oneself could go out the window
As we stepped out of the cinema, a colleague exclaimed: “I want to go back to reporting.”
We had just watched Spotlight, this year’s winner of the Oscar for Best Picture and a fine film on the power of journalism to uncover the truth. Like many of us, this colleague had started out as a reporter with The Straits Times but has since been promoted to another role in the paper.
The film Spotlight centres on the true story of a team of investigative journalists at The Boston Globe newspaper, who in 2001 and 2002 exposed the Catholic Church in Boston’s cover-up of child sexual abuse by priests. They later won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism.
So inspiring is the film that after watching it, newspaper journalists around the world have felt affirmed in their choice of profession – despite grave financial pressure from the Internet that has cost many their jobs and ongoing pressure from other sources, including politicians.
One journalist wrote to Mr Martin Baron, The Boston Globe editor who pushed for a fuller investigation into the matter and went to court to secure the release of crucial documents, to say “the story that inspired the movie serves as a wonderful, wonderful reminder why so many of us got into this business in the first place and why so many stayed despite all the gloom and doom and all the left hooks that landed squarely on our chins along the way”.
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