By
Ray Blehar
Today, on Mike and Mike in the Morning, former PSU football coach Bill O'Brien put the false story to rest that Paterno People were part of the reason he left Penn State. During the interview, when asked about the Patriot News' New Year's Day story, O'Brien answered, "No, that's not accurate at all."
O'Brien's answer also fits the Patriot News' coverage of the Sandusky scandal -- not accurate at all.
Despite the fact that the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for "local reporting," its articles concerning the Sandusky scandal were light on facts, high on supposition, and biased toward the outcome that would sell the most newspapers.
Exactly the same modus operandi used by Jones when fabricating stories about the influences of the JoeBOTs and the Paterno People on PSU's football program.
Interestingly, a check of today's PennLive web-site shows that David Jones has not addressed O'Brien's remarks.
And why would he?
He is following the lead of his employer.
Specifically, to not correct the record when the truth comes out, to only write the parts of the story that fit their preferred narrative, and to bury what should have been the lead deep into the story -- after most readers have quit reading.
When O'Brien decided to leave Penn State, Jones, much like Louis Freeh, had his preferred narrative ready to go and made sure that took priority in the story, but if you could actually stomach reading through the hyperbole and innuendo for most of the article, you would have found that Jones admitted O'Brien was moreso "running toward the Houston Texans" rather than "running away from Penn State" at around paragraph 15.
Of course, that wasn't the headline because that's not a controversial story. A former NFL assistant, who became a college coach had decided to leave for a promotion/career as an NFL head-coach.
Ho-hum. Paragraph 15.
Not something that any national media outlet would swoop in to quote Jones about.
To get the national media to take notice, make the "off the record" conversation the story - ethics be damned.
Louis Freeh's report and press conference was more of the same. Highly inflammatory and false statements were front loaded, but the real story was buried in Chapter 8 of the Freeh Report. Most readers only read the Executive Summary, but if you made it to Chapter 8, you would have found that the Freeh group did not find that PSU officials violated the child abuse reporting statute.
Of course, it is unlikely that anyone in the media actually read Chapter 8, let alone reported on it. Not when they could tweet soundbites from the press conference.
Similarly, no national media outlet was about to swoop in to quote Sara Ganim about a children's charity that hardly anyone knew about -- who were the most obvious culprits for covering up the crimes of Jerry Sandusky.
What did Ganim and the Patriot News do?
Ethics be damned again, they made Penn State and Joe Paterno the enablers of Sandusky's abuse in order to grab the headlines and sell newspapers.
And rather than doing any legitimate investigative reporting on the Sandusky case or on The Second Mile, the Patriot News took the easiest path and did "local reporting" on the press releases and information offered to them by the Office of Attorney General.
Their approach won them a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting.
Their approach also ensured that thousands of Pennsylvania's children would continue to be raped, abused, tortured, and even killed while the public's attention was focused on the alleged failures at Penn State - and not on the failures of the Commonwealth's child protection system.
It's all about the dollar.
The Patriot News decided to sell out Pennsylvania's children for their own fame and fortune.
They also traded their role as the "fourth estate" to be an arm of the state government who keeps Pennsylvania's citizens misinformed and ignorant about the safety of its children.
For the sake of the kids, don't give Penn Live another click.
