Is this hitting below the belt?

Spotlight, in which director Tom McCarthy recounts how the Boston Globe blew the lid off a simmering sex-abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese, is a paradoxical product.

The film pays tribute to dogged investigative reporters, while itself blithely ignoring the standards to which those journalists adhered. Somehow it works.

Treating a historical episode as a drama, Spotlight successfully conveys the essence of the story: the frustrations and triumphs of the reporters, the enduring agony of abuse victims, and the flavor of life in a city dominated by disaffected Irish Catholics.

Source: Spotlight on the Vulnerable | Philip Lawler | First Things