Penn State Coverage Shows Media At Worst

Lou Prato’s been around big news stories all of his life and he’s around one now — the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal at Penn State.

After a long career in TV and radio news, he moved to State College to rejoin the Penn State community, where he earned his journalism degree in 1959. After authoring The Penn State Football Encyclopedia, he became the first director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum. Now retired from the university, he still writes about Penn State sports.

Prato's media career includes working and leading television and radio newsrooms in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago and Dayton, Ohio, as well as work with the Associated Press. His academic credentials include 12 years as head of Northwestern University’s broadcast graduate program in Washington. For years, he was a columnist and contributing writer for the American Journalism Review.

Many news directors know him for his more than 35-year stint on the board of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (now the Radio Television Digital News Association), including 22 years as its treasurer.

He’s shaken by the scandal, but he also believes that the national media has unfairly blackened the entire institution with their "rush to judgment, the speculation, the innuendo, the outrageous commentary based primarily on a grand jury report that is yet to be proven in the court of law."

Never one to mince his words, he discussed his feelings with Contributing Editor P.J. Bednarski in a series of emails, excerpted below.   

I know the horrible things are alleged to have happened with those kids sicken you. But I know that on a journalistic level, you’re appalled by some of the coverage. 

Concern about the coverage is nothing compared to the obvious concern all Penn Staters have for the victims of child abuse and their children, and I mean that sincerely.

But the way most of the media has continued to portray Penn State, the people who live and work here, the students and faculty, the university’s football team and even our alumni base, one might get the idea this whole area is inhabited by a horde of callous, heartless child sex abusers. One cable TV talk show host called the Second Mile “a molestation farm.” Come on!

Now the many sanctimonious, self-serving, second-guessing critics in the media and the gullible, blood-thirsty public they incite and influence have made Penn State symbolic of all that is bad in the American culture — that is until the media moves on to another shark fest, leaving in its wake a lifetime taint of Penn State that will never go away no matter what the ultimate truth may be. 

I am worn out arguing, debating and thinking about everything that has happened to Penn State, to me, my family and many of my friends in the last few weeks, and it is difficult to believe everything reported thus far by the grand jury. Furthermore, it is even more difficult to believe Joe Paterno was so morally deficient as his millions of baying detractors in the media and outside it proclaim. It is so out of character of the man.

As for [Athletic Director] Tim Curley, I have met many liars in my life — particularly in academia — and I cannot believe Tim is a liar and morally deficient. OK, I understand. I and hundreds, if not thousands, of others were duped by Sandusky. So, as to Joe and Tim, we shall see, won’t we?

So, after all these years, this has taught you something new about the media?

I will never watch, listen to, and read the news or watch or listen to talk shows as I had before.

You know what hurts me the most, besides what may have happened to those boys? I was once a part of the media, a journalism graduate who was taught not only to be fair, balanced and objective, but to be sensitive of others, to get every side of the story, never to assume, and to not interject my personal or political beliefs into any story.

I was also taught to be careful of the personal agendas of sources as well as my own, to be cautious of whom to trust, to be skeptical but realistic, to resist the temptation to be first without first assuring you have it right, and to never report a rumor just because you may believe it to be true. My, how idealistic and old fashioned. 

Maybe you don’t see it being so up close and personal to this story, but this is what a lot of people would say media do with stories like these all the time.

Look, there were times in my career I didn’t meet my own high standards. That bothers me to this day. But I never expected journalism to fall to this level of irresponsibility and shameful, malicious depth that it has in the last 20 years. I am sure there are thousands still working in the newsrooms of this country who share my view.