Episode 148: Walter Robinson - How Journalists Exposed the Catholic Sexual Abuse Story

About this episode

Walter Robinson discusses the investigative journalism that exposed the Catholic sexual abuse scandal.

Walter Robinson is an investigative journalist, an editor-at-large at "The Boston Globe," and is the Donald W. Reynolds Visiting Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. This is a rebroadcast of episode 42, from 2022. ------------ Keep Talking Substack Spotify Apple Podcasts Social media and all episodes ------------ Support via Venmo Support on Substack Support on Patreon ------------ (00:00) Intro (00:58) A path to journalism (10:00) The power and state of the Catholic Church during the late 80s and 90s (21:40) "The Boston Globe's" "Spotlight" team (28:10) The Catholic Church's reputation before the Spotlight team’s investigation (35:59) What was revealed in the church’s internal documents (40:56) The Church’s consistent strategy of protecting abusive priests (46:58) Nearly every bishop in every diocese knew about abuse and participated in a cover-up (53:27) The role of the Church's celibacy vow in incentivizing abuse (59:36) What explains the abusive behavior of Catholic Church priests? (01:04:06) Women's second-class status and the role of a free press (01:07:55) The need for a full confession from…

People in this episode

Host: Dan Riley

Guest: Walter Robinson

Topics covered

• journalism
• Catholic Church
• sexual abuse
• investigative reporting
• media ethics
• cover-up

Keywords

• investigative journalism
• Catholic sexual abuse
• Spotlight team
• media
• church cover-up
• journalism ethics
• abuse scandal

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Boston Globe, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Catholic Church

Places: Arizona State University

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