The Investigative Journalism of the movie Spotlight

Spotlight is a movie about a team of four investigative journalists who work for the Boston Globe, but have their own segment within the paper called “Spotlight”. The movie follows the team as they take on the investigation of priests who have been accused of molestation of numerous children within the Boston area. The movie is captivating because it shows how much time and effort is put into investigative journalism. The team does research through interviews, the court case reports, and even the victims themselves. They go door to door when interviewing these victims and it is amazing to see how invested the team was with this investigation. The team interviews a man who is a retired priest and has devoted his life to researching the molestation of underage boys within the catholic church. He comes up with 90 priests who he has found guilty. The team wants to make sure he is right so they work backwards and do the research themselves and find that he was almost spot on because they found 87 priests within Boston. The movie shows how much time and effort goes into investigative reporting because of all the fact checking and denial of interviews. Also, because the catholic church doesn’t want what was going on to get out, they have had the court documents removed so the public cannot view them. But overall, their article about what has happened gets published and the feedback is astonishing because more men who were attacked as children come forward. At the end of the movie it runs city names of other catholic churches that have been accused following the article being published.

 

All the President’s Men

All the President’s Men is a movie about the famous Watergate scandal that President Nixon was involved in during his reelection campaigning. The movie is based around two Washington Post reporters, who start out their investigation as rivals. However, they end up taking on the same investigation of the Democratic Party burglary back in 1972. These two reporters are Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein. The movie follows the two reporters as they investigate, research, and find as much information as they can about this scandal. It all starts when five men are arrested at the Democratic Party headquarters, located in the Watergate building. And then later progresses through their investigations and research processes. At one point the men come across a “behind the scene source” who goes by the name Deep Throat, and who reveals the story behind the break in. This source would not be found out until 2005. This source turned out to be Mark Felt who was the former FBI assistant director. Deep Throat telling Woodward and Bernstein this news does not come until the end of the movie. Ultimately, leaving the movie to end the way the entire investigation started.

Journalism/Reporting for an Organization

Throughout the course of this past semester, I was appointed to be the recording secretary for my sorority. My duties included attendance, keeping track of points by creating weekly quizzes to fill out, and sending out weekly newsletters with announcements and upcoming events, every Tuesday and Thursday. This would take up 5 to 6 hours of my time on a weekly basis. I don’t know if I would be allowed to share and example of what I would send out. But, I hope this counts for some extra credit points.

 

Shattered Glass Movie Review

A man named Stephen Glass who wrote for a magazine called The New Republic, fabricated most of the stories that he wrote. Later, it is found out that he fabricated 27 of the stories that he wrote. He fabricated a story about a younger boy who hacked into a big online website called Jukt Micronics. He then stated that he went to the convention held for Hackers, however, it is later found out that the building where the convention was held was closed on Sunday’s. The editor of the newspaper went in person to the building and the restaurant where these events were held to get a direct and right answer. None of them were open. Also, the journalists at Forbes were doing their own research to investigate whether any of this story was true or not. They questioned the phone number, the website and the fax number. Ultimately, it is figured out that the story and other stories he published were fake, however, throughout the entire movie Stephen Glass kept with what he had written, even though it was all fabricated up until the very end.

CitizenFour

This movie is about how the Documentary-maker Laura Poitras follows Edward Snowden and covers the NSA spying scandal. It all started in January 2013 when she started to get encrypted emails. According to William Binney, the US started to use their surveillance to spy on American citizens after 9/11. Throughout the movie, Laura reads the emails that she had received from Edward Snowden. This really sets the mood and how the movie plays out. At one point in the movie she cuts to the USA military being questioned in court whether they intervene messages from different sources and they deny every single claim. During an interview, Edward Snowden said that the reeason he has leaked all this information is because he believes in the state power vs the meaningful power of the people. And he designed way in which to amplify the state’s power, and his self-interest was not what the interest of the state was. Snowden ended up having to go off the grid while the film was being produced because he needed to protect himself from the US government. Germany and Brazil were two countries that were also doing investigations on what the NSA has been doing. At the end of the video, the journalists and Snowden must give information to each by writing it down on a piece of paper, for their protection, and their sources protection. Edward Snowden’s boldness led another person to release information about other things that the government has been doing in secret.