Sometimes reality is similar to a film. Last year’s Korean movie “Inside Men” showed two scenes. One scene shows a movie character saying, “Anyway the public is like dogs and pigs,” and a second scene exposes upper class people’s sexual promiscuity. In the real world, in July 2016, a senior education official was under fire for comparing the Korean people to “dogs and pigs,” (A) and the Korean news outlet, NewsTapa, reported on Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee’s prostitution scandal (B). In addition to this, in August, the media covered a story in which the famous pastor, Lee Dong-hyun, became embroiled in a sex scandal involving a teenage girl and publically admitted to sexually molesting a female follower (C).
The film “Spotlight” depicts a real story about how a local newspaper uncovers a scandal where children are molested by priests. Observing these recent events, The Argus decided to use this film as this month’s movie to review. The reason is that this movie is closely connected to recent realities (A, B, C) and possesses suggestions for today’s Korean media.

C: Catholic priests sexually abuse children

The film begins in Boston, Massachusetts (MA) in 1976. A prosecutor wearing a dark overcoat comes into a police station. He listens to three points of information from a cop before entering a room. The information included: “The kids and their mother are talking to the Bishop,” “The Father (named Geoghan) is in the break room,” and “None of the big papers came here.” In the room, the Bishop says to the kids’ mother, “You know what good work the Church does in the community.” After a while, the Bishop and Father Geoghan exit the police station and drive away.
The film jumps to the newsroom of a local newspaper, the Boston Globe, in 2001. At the Globe, there exists a four-person investigative team (leader Robby, Mike, Sacha, Matt) called Spotlight. A new editor at the Globe, Marty entrusts the team with the in-depth coverage of the Geoghan case. The Geoghan case refers to a Boston priest, Father Geoghan, who molested 80 kids in six different parishes over the last 30 years. Marty also tells Spotlight about some sealed documents. Marty says Mitchell, the attorney for the victim of the Geoghan case, insists the sealed documents show that current Cardinal Law found out about this case 15 years ago and did nothing.
Spotlight starts its coverage. Robby and Sacha meet Eric, a lawyer who defended victims for the Porter case, which was similar to the Geoghan case. Eric says to them that Mitchell is bluffing. Then Spotlight talks with Phil, the leader of a victims’ organization. Spotlight learns from Phil that sexual molestations of children, including those related to Geoghan, are at the “national and international level.” Phil also notifies Spotlight of 13 priests in Boston who sexually assaulted kids.
The team has discovered two important facts. First, the priests, including Father Geoghan, were on sick leave in the MA Church directories when they committed the sexual abuses. In other words, the Church did not remove the assaulting priests from their positions. Second, several victims met a lawyer and did not file a suit against the Church. Instead, they simply reached a settlement with the Church. The lawyer was Eric.
After meeting with Eric, Spotlight gets to know that he privately dealt with the Church, and the victims had to sign a confidentiality agreement to get the settlement.
Mike finds a clear pattern. “Sick leave” was not the only designation the Church used. The Church used a slew of terms in regards to deviant priests such as “absent or on leave,” “unassigned,” and “emergency response.” Additionally, those kinds of priests moved parishes more frequently than others as found in the directories. As the team looks for any priest that meets this profile, they find a total of 87 priests in Boston who are suspected of having acted inappropriately with minors.

B: Alienation from the Church

When NewsTapa reported that it had obtained video files showing Lee Kun-hee paying sex workers, this report quickly became the most searched subject on the Internet in Korea. However, most of the mainstream Korean media did not cover this news. The media’s response illustrates how powerful Samsung is in this country. Just like Samsung, the Church in this movie is so powerful that it sweeps the priests’ sexual abuse scandals under the rug.
Spotlight has a telephone conversation with a former staff member, Richard, at a treatment center where the Church sends criminal priests when they get caught. Richard researched the priests’ molestations and defined their behavior as a kind of mental illness. He had announced his work to the media, but the Church buried it with smear campaigns and public statements by prominent bishops. In addition, according to Richard, the Catholic hierarchy saw a 1985 report warning that pedophile priests were a billion-dollar liability. Cardinal Law initially helped to fund the report, but he backed out and the Church shelved it.
The Church influences victims and Boston citizens as well. One victim says the Bishop came over to his house, and he said nothing like this had ever happened before. Another victim claims she received a lot of pressure from the Church, other parishioners and even her friends to keep quiet. One policeman Sacha interviewed discloses that the chief of the Boston Police Department and everyone else knew about these abuse cases. But he says, “Nobody wanted to cuff a priest.” Why did people act this way?
As mentioned before, the Korean media hardly reported Lee Kun-hee’s scandal. Amazingly, lots of people took this behavior for granted, as they knew the media would not cover it. Several even directly said Lee’s behavior was a far cry from a crime considering his huge contributions to Korean society. The report on Lee Kun-hee is impressive, not because of the report itself, but because of the people who regard Lee’s activities as “unnecessary to cuff.”
In this aspect, the film resembles reality. Robby hears a similar statement from his friend, Jim, who also defended a child-molesting priest in the past. “People (from the Church) are good ones who have done a lot of good for this city.” Robby goes to BC High School (Catholic school) where he graduated and hears that sexual harassment by a priest had occurred. There, Robby meets Pete, a figure in the Catholic Charities. Pete says, “People need the Church. The Cardinal may not be perfect, but we cannot throw out all the good he is doing over a few bad apples.” A positive impact by the Church and the Catholic priests’ sex crimes are completely different from each other. However, people in Boston just try to cover up this crisis.
Regarding the city of Boston, Mitchell says in a conversation with Mike, “This city, these people make the rest of us feel like we do not belong,” and “It (reporting on the priests) takes an outsider.” The outsider in his statement means a person from outside of Boston. Mitchell seems to think that he, Mike, and Marty are all outsiders so they can dig into this scandal against the Church. He knows how strong the Church is. Therefore, he tells Mike that the sealed documents would not be in the courthouse and that they might have been removed by the Church. Mike does not understand. Mitchell says, “But this is Boston. They (the Church) control everything.”

A: Reflection on having been dogs and pigs

After finding 87 priests in Boston, Robby and Sacha meet Eric again. As Robby closely asks questions about the abuse cases Eric settled with the archdiocese, Eric yells, “I sent a list of names to The Globe years ago!” In fact, Eric found a list of 20 assaulting priests in Boston after the Porter case. He thought he “could not go afterwards without the press,” and sent the list to The Globe, but The Globe buried it. Later in the movie, the person who just reported on this list one time with no follow-up was Robby. He did not recognize this truth until Sacha found the 1993 clip mentioning Eric’s list.
Afterwards, Robby visits Jim’s house. The visit was to confirm the list of victims with Jim. Jim condemns Robby’s irresponsible manner when the cases actually happened, saying, “We all knew something was going on. So where were you?” Robby led the investigative team and criticized the concealment of a crime inside the city, but Robby himself was also involved in this kind of concealment.
At the beginning of the film, Marty meets Cardinal Law and says, “For the paper to best perform its function, it needs to stand alone.” To link this to Mitchell’s words, the real role of the media is to be an outsider and report on necessary news. Mike appears to have already                                                                      realized this. As the sealed documents became public, Mike takes them from the judge in charge. The judge asks, “Where is the editorial responsibility in publishing records of this nature?” It sounds like “Why should you report bad things about the Church?” But Mike answers, “Where is the editorial responsibility in not publishing them?”
Meanwhile, Robby had not performed the ideal function of the press in the past. He also knew what he had done wrong. Robby brings the confirmed list of victims and admits what he had done before in front of Marty and Spotlight. Marty consoles Robby, but Robby’s face looks dark because of his reflection on the past. At this point, the film probably states the following. The ideal role of a paper is invaluable and absolute so much so that the journalist must “painfully reflect” on their errors unless they do not achieve that role.
Spotlight fixes the victims’ list and checks that the sealed documents, one of which was a victim’s letter to Cardinal Law, prove that the Cardinal was aware of the Geoghan case and ignored it. The team finally releases an article titled, “Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years.” After the release, Spotlight becomes busy answering other undiscovered victims’ phone calls. The film finishes.

Coming back to reality, again, Newstapa courageously reported on Lee Kun-hee’s scandal. However, most of the Korean press did not write anything about the nation’s top conglomerate head. As we finished this movie, we understood that this is not the genuine role of the press. Robby, in the movie, later reflected on his past mistake. Will the Korean media reflect on their attitudes? Preparing for this article, a small newspaper printed the victim’s letter from the Lee Dong-hyun case. It said, “Only one pastor got caught; only Lee received attention.” How do the big Korean papers react to this letter? Now I wonder how Korean press will be evaluated by future generations. Will they be seen as dogs and pigs? For this not to happen, we, the people, should at least strive not to be like dogs and pigs. If not, someone in the future will definitely say, “Yes, this is Korea.”