Marty Baron Quotes in Spotlight (2015)

Marty Baron: Sometimes it's easy to forget that we spend most of our time stumbling around the dark. Suddenly, a light gets turned on and there's a fair share of blame to go around. I can't speak to what happened before I arrived, but all of you have done some very good reporting here. Reporting that I believe is going to have an immediate and considerable impact on our readers. For me, this kind of story is why we do this.

Marty Baron: We need to focus on the institution, not the individual priests. Practice and policy; show me the church manipulated the system so that these guys wouldn't have to face charges, show me they put those same priests back into parishes time and time again. Show me this was systemic, that it came from the top, down.

Ben Bradlee Jr.: Sounds like we're going after Law.

Marty Baron: We're going after the system.

Cardinal Law: If I can be of any help, Marty, don't hesitate to ask. I find that the city flourishes when its great institutions work together.

Marty Baron: Thank you. Personally I'm of the opinion that for a paper to best perform its function, it really needs to stand alone.

Marty Baron: Did everyone read Eileen McNamara's column this weekend?

Boston Globe Worker: That's the Geoghan case?

Marty Baron: Yeah, what's the follow on that?

Ben Bradlee Jr.: It-It's a column, what kind of follow are you thinking?

Marty Baron: Uh... well apparently this priest molested kids in 6 different parishes over the last 30 years and the attorney for the victims, a Mr...

Eileen McNamara: Garabedian

Marty Baron: Thanks Eileen, Mr Garabedian says Cardinal Law found out about it 15 years ago and did nothing.

Paul Burke: Yeah, I think that attorney is a bit of a crank, and The Church dismissed the claim.

Eileen McNamara: He-said she-said.

Marty Baron: Whether Mr Garabedian is a 'crank' or not, he says he has documents that prove that Cardinal knew.

Ben Bradlee Jr.: As I understand that those documents are under seal.

Marty Baron: Okay, but the fact remains a Boston priest abused 80 kids, we have a lawyer who says he can prove Law knew about it and we've written all of... uh... 2 stories in the last 6 months. This strikes me as an essential story to a local paper, I think the very least we have to go through those documents.

Paul Burke: How would you like to do that?

Marty Baron: Oh uh, I don't know what the laws are here, but in Florida we would go to court.

Ben Bradlee Jr.: You wanna sue the Church?

Marty Baron: Technically we wouldn't sue the Church, we'd file a motion to lift the seal on the documents.

Ben Bradlee Jr.: The Church will read that as us suing them. So will everybody else.

Marty Baron: Good to know.