Putting the Spotlight on Communication Concepts

Dennis E. Clair
23 June 2018
English 114
Professor Strimel

Putting the Spotlight on Communication Concepts

After a recent viewing of the movie Spotlight, several things had really taken my breath away. For one, the movie was outstanding, from the acting to the cinematography to the truth is stranger than fiction plotline; from start to finish I was hooked. However while the movie was an outstanding film, it was far from a feel good story. For those unfamiliar, Spotlight chronicles the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigatory journalist team as they uncover a massive child sex abuse scandal that not only affected the Boston Archdiocese but the Catholic Institution as a whole. Throughout their efforts as a team, several key aspects of the effective communication process were shown in addition to flaws in lacking communication skills. In Spotlight, the communication concepts of Decision Making and Leadership in Groups, Communication and Media, and the power of silence in nonverbal communication are deeply evident.

In most cases the purpose of a group is to reach a goal, and in a lot of ways, a group is only as strong as its leader. In the case of Spotlight, the group we followed were the team of journalists unraveling this mass conspiracy. Like most groups, the Spotlight team had a leader and that was their editor Martin “Marty” Baron portrayed on screen by Liev Schreiber. Spotlight the film bases itself in early 2001, at the time Marty Baron was the newly appointed, outsider editor of the Boston Globe. Being in charge is a difficult process in and of itself, but being in charge of people who you have not yet earned their trust and respect is even harder. Without issue, Marty Baron stepped up to the challenge and began making the hard decisions expected of a group leader and communicating those decisions effectively to his team. Before Marty had taken over, it appeared the Spotlight team picked their next story by mix of brainstorming and majority rule decision making. After Marty took over, he instituted a more authority rule type of decision making process and decided on behalf of the group that their next story should be to investigate the priests abusing kids. Ultimately, that decision was to the benefit of the group because they ended up uncovering a story that defined a generation and had ripple effects felt worldwide. An interesting thing to note about Marty, and maybe this was more of an artistic liberty taken for the sake of the film, but initially Marty did not appear to have the textbook leadership traits. He was kind of shy, soft spoken, and at times socially awkward. Given people’s inherent assumptions of what a leader looks and acts like, both the Spotlight team and myself as a viewer, had doubts of his ability. However what Marty lacked in extrovert qualities he made up for in his expertise on the subject of what journalism is supposed to be and he also knew when to step in and when to let his group stand on their own to their benefit. The best decision Marty made for the group was when the team wanted to go ahead with their story on the 87 priests they uncovered to be child predators, Marty made the tough decision to hold off and wait until they uncovered more. His reasoning being that they can bring to light what these monsters did, however the Catholic Institution can plead ignorance, the real story is holding the Catholic Church accountable top down. It was an unpopular decision but it was the right decision. While the film spotlight did a great job showing the positives of a good leader, it also showed what happens when there are bad leaders. In this case, the bad leaders were the child abusing priests and the Church leadership who covered things up. In religious communities, clergy men and women hold several forms of power: reward, coercive, referent, legitimate, expert, etc. With that in mind, that was primarily the reason these child abusers and those that covered for them got away with it for so long. No one within in the Catholic community wanted to speak out against their leaders because they were inherently supposed to know best and be the mediums between the parishioners and God. However it was also their downfall because power is relative, the Catholic community may have been afraid to question or doubt their leaders but those that are not practicing Catholics and those that put being a journalist ahead of being Catholic in terms of where their loyalty lied were able to bring to light these terrible injustices taking place because the Church had no power over them.

The next concept displayed in Spotlight was the relationship between communication and the media. Until the recent leaps in the technological field regarding the internet and smartphones, for much of modern history the newspaper was people’s primary source of information from the media. Given that Spotlight is a film about journalists who work for a newspaper in the pre-social media and pre-smart phone era, this concept is a natural fit. In 2001, the Boston Globe had a sizeable amount of influence within Boston and the surrounding areas. For many at the time, reading the Globe was as much a ritual as it was a rite. The Spotlight team had a responsibility to their audience to not only tell them the stories they wanted to hear, but also the stories they needed to hear. At times it was a balancing act, given that people have the freedom of selective exposure to what media they want to engage in and when, the Spotlight team had to be cognizant not to offend or lose the support of their base. This was made all the more difficult when they started uncovering this massive cover-up within the Catholic Church because not only were some members of the team Catholic or lapsed Catholics, but so was a large portion of their audience. The Spotlight team were well aware of the agenda they were setting out for in pursuing this story and had to make sure it would not fall on deaf ears. The Spotlight team also had to be aware that their message needed to be received by everyone not just Catholics or else it would remain a self-contained problem. Those who were in on the cover-up tried to bring discredit upon the Spotlight team by making it out that they had an anti-Catholic agenda because their editor was Jewish and not from Boston. Luckily, the Spotlight team withstood the challenges and ultimately ensured that not only did their message reach their audience but it was received as well. Because of these efforts, but not shown in the film, the Spotlight team later earned a Pulitzer Prize of outstanding achievement in newspaper journalism for uncovering this child sex abuse story.

The last, but far from least, communication concept shown in Spotlight is the concept of nonverbal communication, but more specifically the power of silence in nonverbal communication. Most experts agree that nonverbal communication tells us more than verbal communication. In the case of Spotlight, nonverbal and verbal communication were displayed throughout, however nothing compared to the power of silence seen within this film. So many members of the Catholic community, and not just in Boston, knew something was amiss but remained silent. There were different levels of who knew what but most people knew something was off, but out of fear of reprisal, fear of rejection, and/or fear of consequences chose not to say something about what was going on or pursue it further. Several characters in the film acknowledged the blissful ignorance that many chose to engage in by remaining silent on what was happening. The one line that struck me the most was when the Spotlight team members Michael Rezendes and Walter Robinson were speaking about the Catholic community not saying anything about the abuse, Rezendes called them “the good Germans”. What he was alluding to were those German citizens in Nazi Germany who knew of the horrors of that regime but also chose to remain silent as to “not rock the boat” so to speak. While I am not here to debate the validity or justification of the comparison, it does show how powerfully negative it can be to not say something in either case. Throughout the film, the Spotlight team was met with a lot of resistance and found silence in place of answers more often than not. When the story was about to be published, when asked to comment, the Cardinal who was implicit in the cover-up refused to comment and again chose silence. All these instances of silence however did not necessarily mean the team got nothing, instead it appeared the opposite was true and that the more silence they encountered the more likely they were on to something. The fact that no one wanted to talk about what was going on and instead remained silent shows that there was knowledge that what was happening was wrong. 

In conclusion, Spotlight was a phenomenal display of a variety of different communication concepts, not just the ones I chose to write about. While I enjoyed the journey that took place on screen of unraveling all the deceptions, exposing the truth, and seeking justice, it left a sort of sickening feeling following my viewing. Growing up as a Catholic and having actually been in Catholic school during the events of the movie, it led to some reflection on my own part of what was known then and what was not. Spotlight brought to light a lot of issues both good and bad regarding how members of society communicate with each other. On display were traits of good leaders and traits of bad leaders and how leaders can make decisions that benefit the group and also decisions that hurt a group. Spotlight showed how interconnected the media is to how information is communicated to society and the responsibilities and challenges faced by the media when trying to transmit their message. Spotlight also exhibited how sometimes the most impactful response is in fact silence and how a lack of words does not mean a lack of message. There was something for all of us to take away from this movie regarding communication and its many concepts, I am sure those that have seen it can agree, and those have not yet will.

References
Floyd, K. (2014). Communication Matters (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
McCarthy, T. (Director). (2015). Spotlight [Video file]. United States of America: Open Road Films.