A screen grab of The Independent's homepage from 2014. Credit: Gil C/Shutterstock.com All rights reserved.This year’s Academy Awards for best picture and best screenplay went to the film Spotlight. Its subject matter was the uncomfortable truth of widespread and systemic child abuse carried out by Roman Catholic priests that had been exposed by committed, investigative journalists on the Boston Globe, backed, crucially, by a committed and fearless editor.
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In the same awards season, another film, with no Hollywood stars and no significant production values on show, captured the spirit of what many regard as British journalism’s finest hour. Attacking the Devil laid out the detail of the Sunday Times’ lengthy campaign to uncover the truth about the thalidomide drug. The documentary was essentially a war story, with the paper’s legendary editor, Harold Evans, showing that when journalism’s great battles are analysed, he emerges as one of its finest generals.
