Talk:Spotlight (film)

Cast length
As per WP:FILMCAST not every single random small role needs to be listed. This is an encyclopedia. "A film's cast may vary in size and in importance. A film may have an ensemble cast, or it may only have a handful of actors. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, so it is encouraged to name the most relevant actors and roles with the most appropriate rule of thumb for the given film: billing, speaking roles, named roles, cast lists in reliable sources, blue links (in some cases)." User:HesioneHushabye may have NPOV or COI interest in violating 3RR to maintain this long list of unnotable characters and actors. It adds nothing to the article, aside from maybe serving the special interest of maybe Elena Wohl or Michael Cyril Creighton or their agent or manager, etc. Making this Wikipedia article into a long arbitrary list of uninteresting people worsens the encyclopedia as a whole. Roughly a dozen is the consensus preference. Unless notable in their own right. JesseRafe (talk) 00:39, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree that shortening the list to include just the main characters, plus others who are notable in some way (indicated by an existing Wikipedia article on either actor or person being portrayed) best serves the main considerations per WP:CASTLIST: "1) the prominence of the cast in the film, 2) the amount of real-world context for each cast member or the cast as a whole, and 3) the structure of the article". Coconutporkpie (talk) 13:12, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I vehemently disagree. Firstly, I reject the scurrilous implication that people who are not A-list actors are "uninteresting people." That's nothing but celebrity jock-sniffing nonsense. Secondly, we come to an encyclopedia for comprehensive information. It is discouraging to consult Wikipedia for the real details that are difficult to find elsewhere and find that someone has edited out what they consider uninteresting. Please, give me the whole story; I'll decide what is or isn't interesting to me.98.183.30.108 (talk) 05:17, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Does this need a section about the sexual abuse stories the US media ignored?
I didn't want to write this into the article without getting the views of the Wiki editing community, but I feel it's something that merits discussion, and I hope this paragraph at least remains here so others can think about it.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the spotlight team uncovered something that was truly awful and that doing so was extremely positive. That fact isn't in dispute. However, it is also beyond dispute that the media in the US - and around the world - persistently ignored cases of sexual abuse in other institutions while focusing unceasingly on the Catholic Church.

We now know for a fact that abuse of minors was never an issue particular to Catholic clergy. The work of Ernie Allen at the Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and the work of Dr. Philip Jenkins at Pennsylvania State (among many others) attest to this point. However, the media chose (at least in the era depicted in the movie) an approach which has led to the mistaken belief, still widespread among the public, that sexual abuse was a particularly Catholic issue.

It is also now widely acknowledged that several reports of abuse in other organisations went deliberately unreported. Here is just one example, as quoted by The Media Report (http://www.themediareport.com/) :

A 2004 U.S. Department of Education report reported that "the most accurate data available" reveals that "nearly 9.6 percent of [public school] students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career." This result prompted Hofstra University's Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, the author of the study, to opine in 2006, "[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem? The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests." A Meanwhile, that same 2004 report cited an important study from the mid-1990s: "In an early [1994] study of 225 cases of educator sexual abuse in New York, all of the accused had admitted to sexual abuse of a student but none of the abusers was reported to authorities." That is an important and alarming fact:

Number of abusive educators: 225 Number reported by school officials to police: 0

Does anyone think this merits at least a line in the main article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.66.108.50 (talk) 13:19, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * No. This is about the film. It's not about what the film is not about. There are other WP entries for such material. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 14:39, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No, for the above reason. Also, Wikipedia is not a soapbox or venue for advocacy or original film criticism (What Wikipedia is not). And even if the material were relevant to this article, the source (The Media Report) is evidently a personal blog intended to promote the author's book Sins of the Press, and therefore not a reliable source per Verifiability, on account of having a financial conflict of interest and no editorial oversight. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 13:12, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Such websites (blogs and promotional sites) are also inappropriate as external links, per External links. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 13:29, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Blogs may sometimes be appropriate when the author is a "recognized authority" on the subject—meaning, at minimum, individual notability per Notability (people). The other standard for a recognized authority or "established expert" is someone "whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications" per Verifiability. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 01:26, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi... original poster here. I would add that the Media Report is one of many sources here. Indeed, in large part it is simply regurgitating the work of respected academics and professionals in the field such as Ernie Allen, Dr Charal Shakeshaft and Dr Philip Jenkins. These certainly meet the Wiki criteria. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.238.42.108 (talk) 00:07, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That may be so; however, since David Pierre is the author of the source article in question, it is his qualifications that are important. If the academics and professionals he cites have written about the Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston or the Media coverage of Catholic sex abuse cases in general, then their own works may be good sources for those articles, provided they check out per Identifying reliable sources. Unless those authors specifically mentioned the film Spotlight in their work, tying them into a discussion of the film would be a novel synthesis of published material. This kind of synthesis is inappropriate unless attributable to a reliable third-party published source, per No original research. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 05:04, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Some very good points. Thanks for your response. I very much agree.

External link: The Media Report
There is some edit warring going on over inclusion of a link to David Pierre's "The Definitive ‘Spotlight’ Movie Review" at themediareport.com, a self-published review by an author with a financial stake in discrediting the film's portrayal of events. I would think that the title alone would raise a red flag; true experts don't need to crow about how "definitive" their work is. Per External links, "Disputed links should normally be excluded by default unless and until there is a consensus to include them". As explained at External links, linking to self-published web pages may sometimes be appropriate if the author is a "recognized authority" on the subject—meaning, at minimum, individual notability per Notability (people). The other standard for a recognized authority or "established expert" is someone "whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications" per Verifiability. I don't think that the author of the review in question meets either of these qualifications. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 04:15, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The review and its author were cited by the New York Times (1/8/16). The author has also been recognized by NPR. Per WP policy, it is clear that the link can be cited. 71.184.143.13 (talk) 20:02, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree that the author fits the criteria for Notability (people). Steakpeak (talk) 18:43, 4 June 2016 (UTC)


 * No, they don't, no matter how many sockpuppets agree with you. How convenient that you can't provide a link to the NYTimes reference.  The Notability (people) guideline has nothing to do with good external links, and is actually related to what *articles* should be kept.  Please don't use misleading edit summaries as you repeatedly have via claiming you are "Reverting vandalism" of different editors when re-adding the link.  If you persist, themediareport will be added to the URL blacklist.  SnowFire (talk) 08:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The link to the NYTimes was already available in the article! http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/movies/before-the-oscars-some-films-face-the-truth-test.html?_r=1 And, yes, it is vandalism if one attacks another user with a falsehood and dishonestly removing a legitimate link for an article. Please familiarize yourself with External links, which allows "those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic" and "relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy." Please be informed that this is your last warning before being reported. Steakpeak (talk) 19:06, 19 August 2016 (UTC)


 * To add to my comment above. I should not have to tolerate false and vulgar personal attacks. This edit warring reeks of anti-Catholic bigotry. The inclusion clearly and unambiguously aligns with Verifiability (especially []) and External links. Steakpeak (talk) 19:29, 19 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I also do not appreciate the condescending "Welcome!" messages in my mailbox. This is about facts, balance, and integrity. Please take personal agendas elsewhere. Thank you. Steakpeak (talk) 23:30, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

It's an editorial dispute, not vandalism. People disagree all the time on Wikipedia. If you accuse anyone who disagrees with you of vandalism, you are not creating a good environment for creating an article, and need to learn that your opinions are not Fact.

Thank you for linking to the NYTimes article, that clears up a bunch. Now, tell me this: is *this NYT review* linked in the WP:EL? No? Why not? Well, because one single review isn't usually worthy of inclusion as an external link. And now you want to include a link mentioned in the article?? That's one step more distant, shouldn't we include the NYTimes review first if we're going to include any reviews at all? And if we are going to include one-step distant reviews, what about all the other links in the NYTimes article? What about all the links in articles from other notable reviewers? You get the point. This would need to be a truly epochal review to merit a link in WP:EL. Almost no movie reviews ever show up in a Wikipedia "External Links" section, at least for well-maintained articles.

You've linked to it yourself already, but "Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion". People say lots of stuff about everything. It needs to be really, really notable stuff to get mentioned here. Otherwise every article on a politician would be long lists of "Pundit Bob called this politician a great figure working for the common man, but Commentator Alice called him a 'huge jerk'." SnowFire (talk) 04:01, 20 August 2016 (UTC)


 * One thing that I was considering was whether Pierre's review could be used as a source in the article itself, thereby getting round the problem of it not being an appropriate external link. However, as others have already explained above, it's not a reliable independent source by Wikipedia's standards, so would not be appropriate as a source. What Pierre has said is already in the article, because the New York Times -- which is a reliable source -- reported it. It's there with the key point of Pierre's views, and with the rebuttal from the other side. So I don't really see why there is all this fuss over trying to ram in an inappropriate external link as well, when the material in question is already in the article. Is it a concern over the phrasing? MPS1992 (talk) 18:45, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Of note as an Executive Producer
There is no appropriate place for this in the Infobox film template, but one of the Executive Producers is Pierre Omidyar. Peaceray (talk) 07:38, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

length of 'plot' section
I mean, come on....

duncanrmi (talk) 22:18, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree. This section may be one of the most ridiculous sections I've ever seen on Wikipedia. 71.184.143.13 (talk) 00:13, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
 * First it was too long, now it's too short. This is a movie about journalism, like All the President's Men or Absence of Malice, which puts a lot of effort into getting the journalism right. I would expect journalism teachers to assign this movie to their classes, because of the insights and techniques that the movie demonstrates. This summary misses most of those insights and techniques. For example:
 * Marty Baron tells them that they already covered the story with superficial stories 5 years ago, and they "changed things not one bit." He pushes them to write an investigative story about the system. One of the tensions in the movie is between writing the story now, about individual cases, which the Church will sweep under the rug, or doing more research, taking more time, and writing about the full extent of the corruption, and the causes behind it, which can actually change things. This story shows how a new editor, who had rotated through the New York Times and the Florida paper, knew how to make use of the Spotlight investigative team and finally write the meaningful story they'd been missing for years.
 * Mitchell Garabedian points out that he is Armenian, and Baron is Jewish. The significance is that it takes an outsider to confront the Catholic establishment.
 * The lawyers have all the facts that the reporters need, and they (and their clients) would like to see the sexual abuse exposed in the press. They've given that information to the Globe in the past. But after they've settled the cases with confidentiality agreements, they can't talk about it any more. The tension is between their desire to talk and their legal obligations of confidentiality. They're trying to find ways to tip off the reporters without getting disbarred.
 * Sources like Phil Sariano, the founder of SNAP, are giving the Spotlight team what we now know are the answers, but it's so shocking that they're not sure whether to believe it without confirmation. A major theme of this story is the effort to confirm the charges that we now know to be true (in contrast to the Rolling Stone story, A Rape on Campus).
 * Baron is pushing his reporters to find out the "why" of the story, to understand the problems with the system that lead to abuse and cover-ups. The main tension in this movie is to ask the "why," and finally answer it. We get the answer in the speakerphone interview with Richard Sipe (whose name this summary doesn't even mention). First, Sipe confirms that it's not a few bad apples, but a systemic problem (the systemic problem that Baron was pushing them to find). Sipe says that the fundamental problem is celibacy, which only 50% of priests follow, and which creates a culture of secrecy that tolerates pedophiles, who are 6% of all priests. This is the confirmation of Sariano's claims that they've been looking for.
 * The two investigative tracks are interviewing people and searching documents. The interview track includes finding sources who can give you links to other sources. They also go through an old-fashioned shoe-leather effort of finding people in their homes and asking them to answer questions. The documentation track is the court filings and the church directories.
 * The reason people were so reluctant to confront the Church on this is that, as many people say, "the Church does so much good for this community." Cardinal Law was a civil rights activist, who edited a newspaper. Father Shanley was a long-haired 1960s hippie, who was acting on values of sexual freedom, which seemed more acceptable at the time. Father Pacquin says that he never raped anyone, but he was raped himself. The people you report on aren't usually all good or all bad.
 * The Church also manipulates and intimidates people. Peter Conley tries to convince Robinson to drop the broader story, as they've done in the past, by arguing that Robinson is a lifelong member of the community, while Baron is a (Jewish) outsider who will be here for a few years and move on.
 * This is a complicated and important story, with a lot of important journalism lessons. This movie was a masterpiece of condensation and simplification (maybe oversimplification). The Wikipedia rule that movie plot summaries should be about 700 words is just general guidance, and can be longer if necessary.
 * I would like to rewrite this summary myself along these lines. But I'm a journalist myself and now I have to prepare to interview somebody tomorrow. I'll have to come back, unless somebody feels like doing it for me. --Nbauman (talk) 00:21, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Character error
Apologies, don't have time to edit this myself, but the character (and real person) Jim Sullivan is consistently referred to as someone called "Tim O'Neill" in the plot description. That character/person does not exist. Very glaring error as "Tim" is constantly referenced.

Release
It says nationwide release was in November, but it wasn't released in UK cinema's until January? Shouldn't this be edited? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.16.229.76 (talk) 22:35, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Church's criticism of the film and survivors response
The Inquiry has an article about the Church's mixed reaction to the film as well as survivors of abuse responding to the Church's positive reaction, which might provide some balance to the Church Response section http://www.theinquiry.ca/wordpress/rc-scandal/other-countries/u-s-a/usa/catholic-church-has-mixed-reactions-to-spotlight-film-on-priest-sex-abuse/comment-page-1/

O'Malley's comment
"Restoring cited O'Malley comment whih was removed earlier without clear reason; to Talk page?"

- Swliv, [ revision as of 16:42, 2 March 2016]

"Without clear reason"?? As I [ quoted] in the summary when removing, the source says "O'Malley has not seen the movie yet", rendering the removed sentence completely irrelevant and inaccurate as he was talking about "[t]he media's investigative reporting on the abuse crisis" in general, not at all about the film's illustration (he couldn't because he hadn't seen the movie!) or even perception thereof, if I read the article correctly. Purposefree (talk) 21:53, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Purposefree, glad you spelled out that the line you quoted in your explanation was from the source itself. That's what hadn't been clear to me when I was looking, quite quickly, into your removal of what seemed a plausible component of the story given the title of the source article, for instance, and O'Malley's clear relevance to any aspect of the film or the larger story. Now that I've read the source I've specified the circumstances of the cardinal's statement in the article. As the original line made clear, even though he hadn't seen it yet he was well-briefed on the film, was clearly addressing it directly and, as I've now said in my edit, intended to see it. Thanks for following up here. Hope this works for you.Swliv (talk) 01:49, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The way it was written on the section failed to distinguish cause and effect. He was commenting on the investigation, not the film. He commented on the investigation just because there happened to be an upcoming film about it. He was talking about the reporting, the survivors, the abusers, and the church, but certainly not about the content of the film, with the only exception being the fact that it was about that very investigation. Purposefree (talk) 03:33, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Good work. He didn't even mention the Globe. Trying to parse the Globe story (in light of that in part) ended up beyond me (maybe confirming your point). I did do a bit more; felt the 'watching plans' still worthwhile; don't think that was in The Pilot. On. Swliv (talk) 19:27, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Polish television incident
Telewizja Polska, which recently underwent structural changes and now is controlled by the conservative and Catholic politician Jacek Kurski of the PiS party, has been criticised for describing the film as a 'paedophile scandal in Boston', rather than 'paedophile scandal in the Catholic Church'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.159.32.40 (talk) 11:24, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Spotlight Team Header
I realize this may be slightly pedantic, but I feel like labeling the first section of the cast list as "The Spotlight Team" is misleading in its current form. When Robby is explaining Spotlight to Marty Barron, he refers to them as a four-person investigative team. Now yes, obviously they report to Bradley and Barron, and both had a role to play in what Spotlight uncovered, but the Spotlight team isn't a generic term - it's the name of the collective work of Robinson, Rezendes, Pfeiffer and Carroll. The most obvious solutions are either to change the name on the first section to "Boston Globe Staff" and move the actors playing MacNamara and Kurkjan into that section, to leave it labeled as The Spotlight Team and move Barron and Bradley to the Additional section, or to create a third area that is for Globe staff who are not on the Spotlight team. Or another option would be to relabel the first section "The Spotlight Team and Their Editors."

Any thoughts on this change? CleverTitania (talk) 05:01, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Categories Removed
User User:Bleff removed two categories from this page, Category:2010s LGBT-related films and Category:American LGBT-related films, with the notation that "Pedophilia isn't LGBT." While obviously the statement is true, I feel the user has made an inaccurate assumption on why the categories were attached. But before I undid the change I wanted to get some consensus on it.

There are several LGBT issues raised in the film, in particular the conversation between Joe Crowley and Sacha Pfeiffer, where he talks about how it felt to be attracted to men and be introduced to sex by being abused by male priest and he discusses how Father Shanley used a mobile with LGBT terms on it to introduce the topic of sex. Phil Saviano and Mike Rezendez also bring up that there's a presumption that sexual orientation plays a role in what priests do commit abuse and what victims they choose, but that Richard Sipe's research shows that the reason more abusers target boys is not about preference, but the belief that boys will experience more shame based on cultural norms surrounding masculinity. And the conversations with Joe and Patrick McSorley specifically highlighted how both homosexual and heterosexual male victims were partly afraid of being identified as homosexual, should anyone find out they'd had sexual contact with a priest, and this contributed to their not reporting the abuse.

I think there are enough examples presented in the film, of how some priests used their victim's sexual orientation as a way to groom them and keep them silent, to say that it's specifically addressing the impact this network of abuse had on LGBT children. And given how the film was written, I think it's safe to say that the conversation with Joe Crowley represents many conversations the team had with LGBT victims, throughout the course of their investigation. In my opinion, all that equates to this being a relevant film to those two categories. But I'd like to hear additional opinions on the topic. CleverTitania (talk) 14:28, 22 June 2019 (UTC)


 * , I have not seen the film, but I removed the categories because I found no mention of homosexuality or sexual orientation in the article itself. It was a wrong assumption on my part so I apologize. --Bleff (talk) 14:14, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Update to Historical Accuracy Section
In the Historical Accuracy section added by Muppet321 a couple of weeks ago, the resource cited for the information about the Paquin interview didn't contain any information about who conducted the interview quoted in the film, it only says that the dialog was taken from the article which was written by Pfeiffer and Kurkjian. The only reference to Kurkjian conducting the interview is an unsourced person in the comments section.

So I did some digging and rewrote the paragraph to represent information taken from Kurkjian's and Pfeiffer's own words, in separate interviews, and added those citations instead. Pfeiffer says the scene was a blending of their separate interviews with Paquin, and Kurkjian's recounting of the events doesn't dispute that. There's some ambiguity on who talked to him when, so I just left that out, and focused on specific details they both mentioned. CleverTitania (talk) 15:55, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Whoops, didn't realize I'd used the same source for Pfeiffer's statements as Muppet321 used for the paragraph above, creating duplicate citations. I've fixed it. CleverTitania (talk) 16:07, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Searching.
Hello. I'm not a programmer or editor. I'm looking for the person who wrote the plot summary. 174.242.209.188 (talk) 06:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)