Patriot News Sandusky Coverage and the Abandonment of Journalistic Ethics

My ongoing review of the Patriot News coverage of the Sandusky scandal reveals an ethicist's nightmare

By
Ray Blehar

In my recent research I came across a number of Patriot News (P-N) articles that made me raise the question of journalistic ethics. The first was P-N's, November 8, 2011, front page Op-Ed by its Editorial Board that called for the resignation of Spanier and the retirement of Paterno. The other was its coverage of Joe Paterno's grand jury testimony, which was read into the record on December 16th, 2011.

To determine how ethical their work had been, I referred to a Poynter Institute seminar on Online Journalism Ethics and have provided excerpts (my emphasis added).

Principles & Values 

• Journalists should honor the principle of independence. They should avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts that could imperil their ability to report or the credibility of their reporting or commentary. They should not accept gifts or favors from people or entities they cover or over whom they might influence coverage.
• In addressing an issue or question of independence, the resolution might come through a strategy of transparency or disclosure.
• Journalists and news organizations should understand the necessity of defining, and clearly labeling, news and opinion. In an open environment like the Web, consistency in presentation can help the reader see clearly where the lines are drawn between news and opinion.
• Whenever journalists or organizations blur or blend those roles, they need to recognize the peril and weigh the consequences.
• Variations of tone and presentation in storytelling are appropriate for reaching new audiences, but those variations should be consistent with the bedrock editorial principles of the brand. Be clear on what you stand for, and honor it.
• These principles apply across all content and all platforms.

"Protocols

We will never knowingly publish or air falsehoods.

The quality of publishing decisions — from how to report a story, to what elements to include, to issues of linking — can be significantly improved by responding to a set of questions. These questions include:

·         What purpose will be served?

·         What harm might be caused?

·         How much of this content is verified?

·         How reliable and comprehensive are the sources?

·         Are we giving proper context?

When we discover that we’ve distributed an error, we will consider the following:

·         What has been the likely impact of the error and how can we most effectively address that?

·         How appropriate is it to retain a record of the error for readers who return to the story or bloggers who have linked to it in its original form?

·         What publishing conventions might work best (for example: strikethroughs, appended corrections, corrective posts by readers, an editor’s note)?

The P-N Op-Ed of November 8th blurred the lines between opinion and fact when it was placed on the front page and presented unproven allegations and other information from the Sandusky grand jury presentment as facts.  

History has now proven many of the assertions in the presentment to be false, however, that does not excuse the P-N for presenting information out of context or publishing falsehoods.   There was also the appearance of a conflict of interest in their reporting in this piece (and throughout the scandal), as it was their practice to avoid publishing anything negative about The Second Mile.  

As you will see in the editorial below, the charity was mentioned only one time and its leaders were not criticized for their failure to report the same incident or even for the fact that Sandusky was able to abuse children under their noses for over a decade.  Instead the editorial board blamed Paterno and Spanier for the abuse of ALL of Sandusky's victims.  It is a falsehood that they've never corrected.

As you can see, the Editorial Board took a number of quotes out of context and falsely reported that a report by Spanier and Paterno would have been able to save all eight victims from Sandusky's abuse.  This Op-Ed should have been considered a journalism ethicist's nightmare.

However, it was just the opposite. 

Alleged media ethicists Kelly McBride and Jason Fry of the Poynter Institute praised The Patriot News for condemning two individuals based on unproven and false statements:

"With the biggest staff of sports journalists in the world, ESPN should have been leading the charge to ask tough questions and shed light on this scandal," they wrote. "Instead, it was the tiny Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. out in front of the journalism pack. Their reporters managed to track down two mothers of boys Sandusky allegedly abused. And the paper had the leadership to write a front-page editorial calling for Penn State trustees to clean house."

The "ethicists" also failed to ask a few critical tough questions themselves.  

Specifically, how did The Patriot News track down the mothers and why was there not more focus on the charity that was used as a victim factory?

Tracking Down The Mothers

The P-N answered the first question when it revealed that it had possessed the 1998 police report in early 2011.  That report was over 95 pages in length and contained the names of at least two potential Sandusky victims (Victim 6 and BK).  The mother of Victim 6 confirmed that Sara Ganim read verbatim from the report during their conversation, thus it was the report that led Ganim (and police) to the mother.  Even though Ganim had the report since January 2011, she denied knowledge of it in a December 3, 2011 column.

In Aaron Fisher's book, Silent No More, Mike Gillum, Fisher's (Victim 1) psychologist, believed that Ganim used the police report of Fisher's case to track him down. Trial transcripts would later reveal that "a reporter" had visited the previous residence of Fisher, but was redirected to the family’s new home by former neighbor Josh Fravel.   In a snarky column about Fisher's book, Sara Ganim denied using the police report, bragged that her March 31st story was 100 percent accurate, and then criticized Gillum for getting the name of the school district wrong.  For the record, there were three errors about the date, among other blunders, in Ganim's "100 percent accurate" story. (I will detail the "other blunders" in an upcoming report).

However, the million dollar question is: Would Poynter have been praising the P-N if they had known it was leading the "journalism pack" by using leaked information -- and then lying about that by claiming they were protecting their (anonymous) sources?

The Second Mile

The Patriot News coverage of The Second Mile reveals that it purposely avoided reporting anything negative about the charity.  While Ganim was praised as a crime reporter and being familiar with the "local beat" in Centre County, it was other national media who dug up the most revealing stories about charity's board members and donors.  

On November 16th, Deadspin.com reported that past and present members of the charity’s board gave $641,481.21 to Corbett's 2010 gubernatorial campaign.  The P-N had run an earlier column, stating that the Board had given over $25,000 to the campaign.  On November 17th, the P-N ran a sensational story about  Penn State using TSM to build its brand.  It cited paltry donations from well-meaning alumni, alumni and student participation in TSM activities,  and former football stars volunteering as the key factors in tying the fates of the two organizations together.  Meanwhile, the more serious business relationships between the TSM Board (i.e., Corbett donors) and Penn State went unreported.  

On December 19, 2011, the Associated Press ran a story that captured complaints of "being kept in the dark" by five TSM board members and two local businessmen who were donors to The Second Mile. FoxNews ran a similar story from complaining donors -- a month earlier.  The Patriot News did no exclusive reporting on the criticism from within the charity until August 2012 and never did any special reports or exclusives about the complaints from its donors.

On the whole, the bias in the P-N's reporting on the Sandusky scandal provides the appearance of a conflict of interest between the paper and the state government (e.g., Governor Corbett and his donors, AG, and others).

Fabrications

Just like its November 8^th Op-Ed, the P-N's November 11, 2011 Pulitzer prize winning story was also ethically challenged.  It used a series of misquotes to fabricate a story about McQueary's report being watered down at every stage.   The falsehoods in this story were purposeful to support a narrative that solely blamed Penn State for enabling Sandusky’s crimes.

Its report was a highly inaccurate account of what had transpired, considering that McQueary spoke directly to at least three people in the reporting chain, none of whom backed his story. And as many of us know, a jury didn't fully believe McQueary either and acquitted Sandusky on the charge which was the driver of the Editorial Board's moralizing over the incident.  For the record, the P-N didn't give that rather important acquittal nearly the coverage it gave when it was merely an unproven allegation.

"According to the grand jury, then, here is how McQueary’s eyewitness account became watered down at each stage:

McQueary: anal rape. (misquoted)
Paterno: something of a sexual nature. (misquoted)
Schultz: inappropriately grabbing of the young boy’s genitals. (misquoted)
Curley: inappropriate conduct or horsing around.
Spanier: conduct that made someone uncomfortable.
Raykovitz: a ban on bringing kids to the locker room." ("Curley testified that he informed...The Second Mile of the conduct reported to him" -- page 8)

The passage above is definitely a case of abandonment of journalistic ethics. The Patriot News knowingly published a falsehood, especially in misquoting McQueary, omitting the fact that he had told his father about the incident, and by watering down what was reported to Dr. Jack Raykovitz.

The Ethics Questions

From an ethical standpoint, what purpose was served by the front page Op-Ed written by The Patriot News?

It didn't make the community safer. It did not describe how to recognize or report child abuse or that the appropriate action was for Mike McQueary to make a report to ChildLine.

The Op-Ed pontificated that “we needed to do what was right,” but the only "solution" it provided was to punish Spanier and Paterno.   The only purpose served by the editorial appeared to be to inflame the public's  opinion against two individuals who were yet to be found guilty of anything.

What harm was caused?

The reputations of two men and, by extension, an entire University was ruined before the criminal justice process had run its course.  What the P-N did was on par with the actions of the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s portrayal of Richard Jewell as the Olympic Park bomber and how the national media reacted to the charges in the Duke lacrosse case.  Both times, innocent individuals were assumed guilty up until the point that a government official cleared them. 

How much of this content is verified?

The answer was none. The lawyers for the P-N  should have made it clear that a presentment is a very one sided prosecutorial document that is provided to a grand jury to vote on and accept.  Nothing in a presentment is “verified” until a jury returns verdicts and in this case, the most inflammatory charge that caused the “moral outrage” resulted in an acquittal.  Simply put, the lawyers fell down on the job.

How reliable and comprehensive are the sources?

The answer is it was a singularly sourced document, reliant on the writing skills and imagination of the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General.  As history proved, much of the content of the grand jury report was not accurate.

Are we giving proper context?

The P-N Op-Ed was mostly out of context.  Statements were incorrectly attributed as quotes to Paterno and Schultz -- and they were taken of context.  

One could say that the entire Op-Ed was out of context because it was treating the presentment as if it was the exact testimony and full circumstances of the alleged incidents.  However, it is clear that the editorial board made choices to leave out  important details that would have shown a failure of organizations aside from Penn State.  For example, Central Mountain High School was giving Sandusky unauthorized access to Aaron Fisher.  The Second Mile gave him similar access to children.  But for a reason never explained, the P-N decided that Sandusky's access to the campus was more of an enabler than his access to children. 

 

P-N Blew Chance To Correct The Record, Continued Ethical Nightmare

On December 16, 2011, the grand jury testimony of Paterno, Curley, and Schultz was read  into the record at a preliminary hearing.    However, before the transcripts were posted, Sara Ganim ran a column that did not provide the full context of Paterno's testimony under the title,  "Former Penn State coach Joe Paterno's full grand jury testimony on Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse case read into the record at the hearing."

By the fourth paragraph the P-N had again misquoted Paterno and presented the information out of context:

"McQueary told him he'd seen Sandusky who was "fondling a young boy" in the showers of the Lasch Building."

Paterno's testimony about what McQueary told him was much less certain that Ganim reported.  Here is the full statement:

"Well, he had seen a person, an older -- not an older, but a mature person who was fondling -- whatever you might call it, I don't know what the term would be -- a young boy."

In reading Paterno's full grand jury testimony, a reasonable person would have concluded that his memory of the incident was very unreliable.  For example, Paterno didn't remember what he said to McQueary, therefore, why would one assume that he remembered what McQueary said to him?  Also, Paterno did not recall when he spoke to Curley about the incident, had no recollection of the actual meeting he had at his home with Curley and Schultz, and had no recollection that Curley had circled back to talk with him after their Sunday meeting.

Paterno doesn't remember any of those things.

Can the editorial board of the P-N explain why they accepted his testimony of "fondling" and "sexual nature" as accurate, when they knew much of his other testimony was inaccurate?

Again, it was a question of ethics.  "How reliable and comprehensive are the sources?"

Rather than doing the right and ethical thing, and determining Paterno's testimony was unreliable (particularly to make a moral judgment), the editorial board "cherry-picked" statements that supported the narrative that was set a day earlier by Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan.

Noonan, who was under fire for not providing adequate resources for the Sandusky investigation, took the opportunity that was presented at the November 7th press conference to deflect attention away from the botched investigation.  The P-N was a useful tool in the ruse, absolving everyone but Penn State for their failures to stop Sandusky.

It was a pattern that would become routine for the P-N.

Every time new information surfaced that could have put the spotlight on another organization's failures, the paper (to include its lawyers) would craft lead stories that omitted or presented falsehoods about some of the most important information.   This happened when the psychology reports were released in March 2012, in its Sandusky trial coverage in June 2012, and during the preliminary hearings in July 2013.

Conclusion

The P-N's reporting on the Sandusky scandal has misled the public ever since they broke their first story in March 2011.   What was considered "adept" coverage by the Pulitzer committee and other notables simply exposed that the journalism community had little understanding at all of the dynamics of child sexual abuse.

While the paper could have legitimately investigated the conduct of The Second Mile charity and likely won a Pulitzer for investigative journalism -- it went solely for headlines by sensationalizing the alleged role of Penn State football facilities as the enabler of Sandusky's abuse.

Their reporting did not serve the public's interest, given that the public has yet to truly learn how Sandusky was able to access children repeatedly to abuse them -- on and off Penn State's campus.  Its reporting protected some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Pennsylvania, while ensuring the weakest -- Pennsylvania's children -- would remain in harm's way

Their coverage was the antithesis of ethical journalism.