By
Ray Blehar
Had Jerry Sandusky been a Boy Scout leader, there likely would not have been a "sex scandal" at Penn State University (PSU).
Imagine the following scenario...
Upon receiving a report that local Scoutmaster Jerry Sandusky had been observed showering with a boy, late at night in a seemingly abandoned PSU locker room, University officials reported the incident to the Board of Sandusky's Boy Scout troop.
After being informed of the incident, a discussion ensued among a small group of the troop's Board members. One very prominent member stood up and defended Sandusky's actions, stating he didn't think it was a big deal that a scoutmaster had showered with one of the scouts. He added that men and children shower every day at the YMCA and the issue seemed to be a "non-starter." He told the other Board members not to take it to the full Board for a decision. The report was stopped dead in its tracks.
Ten years later, Sandusky was charged with the abuse of 8 boy scouts. The investigative report revealed that PSU officials had alerted the Boy Scout troop about Sandusky and that its Board took no action. As a result, more scouts were subjected to abuse.
What would the media have done with this information?
Would it have blamed PSU for not fulfilling its "moral obligation" to protect the boy scouts?
Or would it have put the blame where it belonged -- on the scout troop's board?
The answer is obvious, given that there were cover ups of prior sex abuse cases in the Boy Scouts. It would have become a story of national interest
But The Second Mile (TSM) wasn't the Boy Scouts.
As one PSU graduate in journalism recently tweeted....
Selling newspapers and getting clicks trumps the truth every time.
Note the next tweet by Amy Z. Quinn's employer....
There are numerous ways that so-called journalists could reference Jerry Sandusky, such as "convicted child molester" or "serial child molester," however, as the latter tweet confirmed, the media didn't believe that Sandusky's name was nearly as important (to garnering readers) as his association with PSU.
Sadly, that has been the case from the alleged leak of the Sandusky charges and subsequent press release by the Office of Attorney General (OAG). The press ran with the OAG's story apparently without the least bit of fact checking.
Had they done any research at all, they would have learned that the unknown charity called The Second Mile (TSM) was located in a county with a history of covering up serial child sex abuse cases. A former TSM board member, Judge Bradley Lunsford, was involved in one of the decisions that kept the lid on a prior abuse case.
So much for investigative journalism.
The media pack pushed on, ignored TSM, made Sandusky a secondary player in the scandal, put Penn State at the forefront, and totally whiffed on the lessons learned and improvements for protecting children that should have emanated from the scandal.
