Good journalism and bad in Spotlight & Truth

I recently saw two movies about this era's major events in journalism, one triumphant and one catastrophic.

In Spotlight, the Boston Globe uncovers the Boston Catholic Archdiocese's clergy sex abuse scandal. First there are two priests convicted of child rape. Then an activist claims there are 13 priests the Archdiocese knows to have abused children, stunning the Globe reporters. A psychologist specializing in the field estimates that 6% of Catholic priests abuse children, which the Globe calculates to be 90 Boston area priests. Later reports would show the number of accused to be even higher.

The Spotlight team's method is brilliantly simple. They find patterns in public directories of priests that easily identify abusers being shuffled among churches. A church lawyer reluctantly confirms a list of 70 priests and asks "What took you so long?" A victims' attorney speaks compellingly: "It it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one."

Mark Ruffalo's understated performance as a lead reporter carries the movie. His acting is very effective and results in an authentic character. And hats off to Michael Keaton who in this stage in his career is playing respected roles in serious movies.

Truth is about CBS's horrendous journalistic failure in reporting on George W. Bush's questionable record in

the Texas Air National Guard. CBS staff obtained documents from a truly shady source and rushed a story to air without fully vetting the documents. Bloggers immediately called the documents into question, but CBS repeatedly defended them. CBS ultimately retracted the story, and after an investigation, all involved, including Dan Rather (portrayed excellently by Robert Redford), are ousted.

It was really awful journalism. It was a big mistake to run the story in the first place without authenticating the documents. But to dig their heals in against all evidence was a catastrophic error that destroyed a news team, ruined the reputation of a respected news anchor, and hastened the decline to television journalism. And worse, it knocked the legs out from under the real story of Bush's questionable National Guard record.

These movies are about organizational failure as much as they are about reporting. People will do bad things in any organization, but it takes more than that for systematic failure. An individual in an organization, be it CBS News or the Boston Archdiocese, can behave badly. But when the organization steps in to do everything but properly remedy the situation, catastrophe can follow.

Billy Joel biography

I remember as a big Billy Joel fan 25 years ago, I would hear many people tell me they only like his "old stuff". Funny, now that he largely quit songwriting in 1993, all of his songs are his old stuff. I don't know what would have happened if he continued creating new music. It seems common for an artist to heave a period of golden creativity early in their career that they never recapture as they put out mediocre music later. But Billy Joel was still creating hit music when he quit, so maybe the songs he never wrote would have been good ones.  But also, he had created a vast catalog by the time he stopped making new music: Twelve studio albums that easily fill the greatest hits collections his record company continues to release.

His post-songwriting years are nothing to write home about. By all accounts he is a hardcore alcoholic. He's had a string of relationships with women his daughter's age--he's married two of them. Wife #4 just gave birth to daughter, making Joel a new father at 66. He builds boats and motorcycles, respectable enough hobbies.

At 66 he perform's regularly, rebuilding the fortune many times over that he lost through bad management before his final album. He's not the kid he once was dancing all over the stage. His voice has dropped a bit and he doesn't get up from the piano often. But he will always be a powerful performer. Even as a senior citizen, it is special to see a performer sing and play the lead instrument through a concert. There is a great wholeness to seeing him lead the show like that.

I think Fred Schruers was going to be the coauthor of Joel's autobiography, and this biography is what resulted after Joel pulled out as author. It draws from, among many sources, extensive interviews the author conducted with Joel, and provides layers of detail and insight probably not available before.