The art of truth­ful storytelling

The films that affect us the most work on a nar­ra­tive lev­el and a much deep­er lev­el. Spot­light, direct­ed by Tom McCarthy, is a sto­ry about sto­ry­telling that salutes its sub­jects by mim­ic­k­ing their craft­ing skills, in the process inspir­ing my own desire to learn by gleam­ing exam­ple. To be more lit­er­al, Spot­light focus­es on the epony­mous inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism team at The Boston Globe and how, in 2002, they exposed the Catholic Church’s com­plic­it silence in hun­dreds of cas­es of child sex abuse with­in the Boston Arch­dio­cese. The deeply researched arti­cle, ​‘Church allowed abuse by priest for years’, and its numer­ous fol­low-ups caused pub­lic scan­dal, legal redress for the vic­tims and won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize.

I saw Spot­light in Novem­ber 2015. Direc­tor Tom McCarthy, writer Josh Singer and actor Stan­ley Tuc­ci were in atten­dance, as was Mark Ruf­fa­lo via satel­lite link-up – his big ami­able face fill­ing the mas­sive screen. There were two oth­er guests: jour­nal­ists Mike Rezen­des and Sacha Pfeif­fer, played in the film by Ruf­fa­lo and Rachel McAdams. For the first time since for­ev­er, jour­nal­ists were more mag­net­ic to me than movie stars. Primed by hav­ing seen their metic­u­lous truth-seek­ing in dra­mat­ic film form, I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

Their con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­cus­sion implied a wealth of knowl­edge uphold­ing the care­ful­ly cho­sen words of the sur­face. Eyes twin­kled. Pas­sion was evi­dent but in-check. I was exhil­a­rat­ed to soak up the pres­ence of peo­ple who had trained them­selves to seek social­ly ben­e­fi­cial truths. Here were two peo­ple who had faced up to the hor­ror and sor­rows of child sex abuse, via the medi­um of truth­ful sto­ry­telling, and in doing so made a gen­uine, tan­gi­ble difference.

After the screen­ing, I inter­cept­ed Mike Rezen­des (this felt par­tic­u­lar­ly fit­ting giv­en that I had just watched his on-screen per­sona inter­cept many peo­ple in the name of jour­nal­ism). The film’s depic­tion of indi­vid­u­als deter­mined to avoid tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for their part in a grotesque crime struck me as unpleas­ant­ly relat­able, so I asked Mike: ​‘How do you live with­out being in denial?’ He passed on a quote that had been passed on to him: ​“Tell the truth with­out fear or favour.”

These words felt like the way for­ward. They stayed with me on the tube home as I brain­stormed dif­fer­ent ways I could cov­er Spot­light. The sim­plest answer felt the most mean­ing­ful: talk to Rezen­des about the way he tells truth­ful sto­ries. Rezen­des had giv­en me his card at the screen­ing, so I reached out to him and he agreed to meet up the next time he was in town.

First, the facts. He tells me he was born to a home-mak­er moth­er and a city gov­ern­ment employ­ee father in Ban­gor, Maine. What year? ​“I don’t remem­ber,” he says in con­vinc­ing dead­pan. He doesn’t remem­ber what years he spent study­ing at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty as an Eng­lish major, either. Pre­cise recall kicks in regard­ing his first news­pa­per gig. East Boston Com­mu­ni­ty News was where it all began – he was a vol­un­teer reporter for two years while study­ing, and was pro­mot­ed to edi­tor imme­di­ate­ly after grad­u­at­ing where he stayed for anoth­er two years. Pride for the paper’s work and the val­ues it stood for is forth­com­ing: ​“It was a non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion and we con­sid­ered it our mis­sion to fight for social and eco­nom­ic jus­tice for peo­ple in this neigh­bour­hood. It was a very low-income part of Boston, right near the airport.”

Right from the word go, Rezen­des showed a clear desire to har­ness jour­nal­is­tic skills to cam­paign for social jus­tice. I won­der where this came from. Not his par­ents, he says. The source of his moral fibre was not some­thing he had giv­en much thought to before he start­ed talk­ing about Spot­light. Now he has come to the con­clu­sion that the organ­i­sa­tion that made his name through its vices also forged his virtues. ​“The Catholic Church, as I was intro­duced to it, was an organ­i­sa­tion that fought for the poor. The life of Jesus is a life of real­ly advo­cat­ing for the voiceless.”

After the East Boston Com­mu­ni­ty News, Rezen­des cob­bled togeth­er a free­lance exis­tence tak­ing assign­ments from The Real Paper, Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe and The Boston Her­ald while also copy-edit­ing for the lat­ter title. He had a staff job at The Boston Phoenix before he switched coasts to work at the San Jose Mer­cury News in Cal­i­for­nia. Last stop before bed­ding down at The Globe in 1989 was The Wash­ing­ton Post – always nice to have that one on your resume.

“That is my least favourite part of inter­view­ing, just going through facts,” I say. ​“Well you have to get the facts right so that’s fine,” responds Rezen­des, which makes me feel good, like I am abid­ing by some jour­nal­ists’ code. Real­is­ti­cal­ly, he prob­a­bly said that just to put me at ease. Unlike the stereo­typ­i­cal image of a news­pa­per jour­nal­ist as a jad­ed hack, Rezen­des appears to like peo­ple and have time for them.

Lat­er on in our inter­view he goes on to sing the prais­es of appre­ci­at­ing what every­one has to say. It’s in rela­tion to infor­ma­tion-gath­er­ing but might as well be advice for all social life. ​“It’s good to be open-mind­ed and open to dif­fer­ent points of view that you might not have con­sid­ered. I think if some­one comes in and they’re very pas­sion­ate about what they’re say­ing and they’re express­ing a point of view that you haven’t con­sid­ered or thought about, some­times you just want to lis­ten to what they have to say – and maybe it’s some­thing you want to fac­tor into your report­ing or the way you feel about a par­tic­u­lar issue.”

It’s kind of touch­ing to observe that deal­ing in sto­ries of the worst in human behav­iour hasn’t stopped Rezen­des from being open to new peo­ple and new ideas. When Spotlight’s pro­duc­ers, Blye Faust and Nicole Rock­lin, turned up in 2008 ask­ing for an option on the team’s life rights to enable the movie adap­ta­tion, Rezen­des recalls that while the choice wasn’t easy for all of his col­leagues, it was easy for him. ​“They seemed very sin­cere and very hard-work­ing. Ulti­mate­ly we trust­ed them and thought we would let them have a go at it.”

He is total­ly sup­port­ive of the fin­ished prod­uct. ​“I love this movie for two rea­sons. One, it shows peo­ple how impor­tant inves­tiga­tive report­ing is, and the oth­er thing is it keeps the spot­light, so to speak, on the issue of cler­gy sex abuse.” I try to draw out a deli­cious nugget regard­ing changes or omis­sions but quib­bling isn’t on the bill. ​“The film is remark­ably true to the spir­it of what we did and the sub­stance of what we did. There’s no sig­nif­i­cant omis­sions. They hit all the right notes.”

Spot­light is set only 15 years ago and yet the tools of jour­nal­ism have trans­formed thanks to the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. Rezen­des, who still works for Spot­light, receives an abun­dance of emails and phone calls from peo­ple who want him to inves­ti­gate their cas­es. Choos­ing which ones to pur­sue and which ones to let go may be the hard­est part of the job, he says, before explain­ing his deci­sion-mak­ing process in illu­mi­nat­ing detail. ​“I don’t do sto­ries that affect just one per­son or one fam­i­ly. Usu­al­ly, if I’m going to do a sto­ry about the trou­bles that a par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual or a fam­i­ly has had, to my mind, it should be emblem­at­ic of a larg­er prob­lem affect­ing more peo­ple. I look for wrong-doing that is sys­temic in nature.”

The fold­ing back of a par­tic­u­lar cov­er-up is the arc of the film. Anoth­er com­plex task shown with­in Spot­light – and essen­tial with­in Rezen­des – is the abil­i­ty to bal­ance inter­est in a sto­ry with a ratio­nal analy­sis of whether he can ​“nail it to the ground” with facts. ​“What I try to learn as quick­ly as I can is not only, ​‘Is this a good sto­ry?’ but,‘Can I get the sto­ry?’ That usu­al­ly means, ​‘Can I get doc­u­ments that will prove that what I believe is hap­pen­ing is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing?’ or ​‘Can I get peo­ple in posi­tions of knowl­edge, posi­tions of author­i­ty, who will say on the record what’s hap­pen­ing?’ If I think that the chances are less than 50 – 50 – that I’m not going to be able to get the doc­u­ments I need – then even though I might believe in my heart that it’s an impor­tant sto­ry, a great sto­ry, I’ll move on to some­thing else.”

The charis­ma and bull­shit of peo­ple in posi­tions of pow­er has always struck me as an over­whelm­ing road­block to uproot­ing buried truths. Rezen­des says that bull­shit can be cir­cum­vent­ed via a strate­gic approach. ​“When I’m doing a sto­ry and I might be tar­get­ing a cer­tain per­son, I’ll inter­view that per­son last. The way I know whether that per­son is telling the truth or not is because I’ve already done my report­ing and I already know what the facts are and I just want that per­son to explain it or jus­ti­fy it, usu­al­ly some­thing like that.”

Charis­ma, how­ev­er, is a stick­i­er wick­et. ​“Charis­ma is very pow­er­ful and par­tic­u­lar­ly when you’re deal­ing with elect­ed offi­cials, some of them are very, very charis­mat­ic and very, very charm­ing. Reporters can be very sus­cep­ti­ble to that and I think, hon­est­ly, I was sus­cep­ti­ble to that when I was younger and less expe­ri­enced. It’s some­thing for any reporter to be cau­tious about. I don’t think cyn­i­cism is ever war­rant­ed but it’s good to be scep­ti­cal, if you under­stand the dif­fer­ence. It’s nev­er a wise pol­i­cy to take at face val­ue what peo­ple in posi­tions of pow­er or author­i­ty say to you. You have to remem­ber that your pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty is to ques­tion authority.”

What is cur­rent­ly under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Spot­light team? ​“I’m work­ing on an inves­ti­ga­tion of gaps in the men­tal health care sys­tem,” Rezen­des reveals. ​“We have a ter­ri­ble men­tal health care sys­tem in the Unit­ed States, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to peo­ple who are very seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill, with dis­or­ders like schiz­o­phre­nia and severe delu­sion­al dis­ease. Our men­tal health care sys­tem has dete­ri­o­rat­ed to a dan­ger­ous point.”

I want to find out more but respect the terms of Spotlight’s con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. I want to go into more depth about every­thing and find out what Rezen­des expects upon pub­lish­ing a mas­sive inves­tiga­tive report and whether he can let go of the sto­ries he tells. I want to know how it affects him to know that priests are still abus­ing chil­dren and if he can care­ful­ly delin­eate the prob­lems with­in one city from the prob­lems of the whole world. I use our brief time togeth­er to ask about the tools of truth­ful sto­ry­telling eschew­ing my usu­al fas­ci­na­tion with how an inter­vie­wee feels about their lives. I won­der how it would have been if I had tried to draw him out – would it have been futile, like play­ing a play­er? Or would it have been magnificent?

Our jobs are dif­fer­ent in many ways. He writes him­self out of sto­ries that expose wrong-doers, I write myself into sto­ries that high­light right-doers. There is still a rich par­cel of val­ues that I can turn inward: his rev­er­ence for facts and trust in the good­ness of peo­ple, his focus on choos­ing the right words and will­ing­ness to lis­ten. Oh and there was one more piece of wis­dom: ​“Ulti­mate­ly you have to syn­the­sise every­thing you’ve heard and try to make it coher­ent. That’s not always easy but that’s the job.” Syn­the­sis is not always easy because it is the oppo­site of camp­ing inside your own instinc­tive beliefs. Syn­the­sis requires you to be suf­fi­cient­ly attached to lis­ten to your sources while detached enough to think inde­pen­dent­ly. Syn­the­sis is dif­fi­cult because infor­ma­tion is nev­er-end­ing and it is a kind of mir­a­cle when peo­ple make poignant sense of such a form­less mass. I dare to hope that I can fol­low in the foot­steps of the movie Spot­light, which fol­lowed in the foot­steps of Mike Rezen­des and col­leagues, and that our val­ues will become one.