It was not a great week for U.S. sports journalism at Penn State. Even as the university staged a press conference Wednesday to fire its famous head coach Joe Paterno and president Graham Spanier over allegations of covering up a sex-abuse scandal, it was met by antagonistic, emotional questions from people who were advertised as media in the gathering. The school's administrators did not think to provide a microphone for reporters there (and reporters largely did not identify themselves) so we had no idea who was asking the questions.
But John Surma, vice-chairman of the Penn State trustees, was confronted with questions suggesting that the school had a vendetta against Paterno, that it was knowingly provoking a riot by firing Paterno and that denying the 84-year-old Paterno a chance to coach a final home game on Saturday was diminishing the game. After one particularly hostile outpouring from a so-called reporter, Surma stared out to the media throng and asked, "Was that a question or a statement?"
One of the great fears in journalism is embedded reporters who go native, who become part of the story they cover. Hence the classic no-cheering-in-the-press-box admonition. But the press conference Wednesday night showed what happens when reporters steeped in the Paterno Cult cannot disengage themselves from a football game. The Penn State administration has much to answer for as well, but reporters assailing the school administrators Wednesday for firing Paterno sound like Greeks blaming their debt crisis on German actions in the Second World War.
Book him
There was more the next day as respected reporter Joe Posnanski, who happens to be working on a Paterno book about the octogenarian ex-coach, addressed a journalism class at the school. "Everyone has jumped to amazing conclusions based on one side of the story [U.S. grand jury report]" Posnanski is reported to have said.
"I know he's a good man, there's 60 years of proof. ... Paterno was always dangled by this university. ... If this happened at the University of Miami, no matter how bad it was, it wouldn't have elevated to this level. ... A lot of people came here to bury Joe. As a writer, I'm mad with that, as someone who's come to know the Paternos, I'm heartbroken." And so on.
Then there were the headlines from football types about how a sex scandal will affect Penn State recruiting, how will opponent Nebraska react Saturday, what the fans are losing in all this. How about the victims? La-la-la-la, we can't hear you. It took comedian Garry Shandling to sum it up in a tweet. "Conrad Murray walked away for a moment, and it was negligence. See a kid getting raped in the shower, and it's not a 911 call?!!"
If it all seems familiar, especially to Canadian hockey fans, is that we went through the same when Graham James's crimes were finally revealed after decades of adults looking the other way in the name of hockey while James pursued his sordid agenda on young men such as Sheldon Kennedy and Theo Fleury. In the fullness of time, Penn State's backers in the media will learn what Canadians learned from the James scandal. Negligence is complicity. And that stain never comes out.
Corporate buy-out
Telling sign for Penn State zealots that reality is creeping up. Sponsor's name suddenly disappears from Penn State backdrop used behind interviews. As the tie-dyed Occupy nostalgics like to say, "The whole world's watching."
Making An Ashton of Himself
Actor Ashton Kutcher paused from his duties sinking Two and a Half Men to tweet Wednesday that it showed "no class" to fire Paterno in this way. Then Kutcher explained he hadn't heard of any sex scandal. Apologized. But still will be taken seriously if he opposes the Keystone Energy pipeline. Hollywood.
Canadian takes
Props to TSN Wednesday for putting the Penn State story tops on their SportsCentre lineup instead of NHL. Good hustle. Meanwhile, Sportsnet Connected led with the Toronto Maple Leafs' goaltending woes. Then Penn State. Really? What would it take for the lineup guys there to bump The Monster and Ron Wilson?
The Penn State story has also been a good tonic for Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown, the kind of story he thrives on. The veteran host has had a couple of strong shows on the Paterno fiasco with Fleury, writer Mark Madson and others, rousing himself from his recent lethargy.
Tweet Fight
The scandal also drew two high-profile Canadian athletic figures into a Twitter debate. Calgary Stampeders quarterback Henry Burris, the former starter who's had a couple of dodgy moments on Twitter this year, tried to cut Paterno some slack, saying, "Everyones reacting as If Joe Paterno was in the shower... let's be upset and debate his going to the AD but everyone has a protocol."
That sparked the ire of Fleury, himself the victim of James' sexual abuse. "So protocol take precedence over a kid being sodomized in the shower. You report that to the police ASAP." The two then sniped as Burris kept trying to rationalize Paterno's role and Fleury speaking for the victims. Burris, the father of two boys, concluded by saying he wasn't admonishing Penn State or Paterno, and that such behaviour such be reported.
Flight Risk
Many media commentators have wondered how the grad assistant who witnessed the 2002 sexual assault in the shower by former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky could have stood back and let it happen. It's complicated. The male engineering students at the École Polytechnique left their women colleagues alone in the classroom with Marc Lépine and never stopped him after he'd killed 11 of them. Flight is a powerful human instinct. Especially in a culture that tells our children to farm out confrontation to a third party.