in a media kangaroo court, you’re guilty even if proven innocent!

Ann Althouse has an interesting post about the Penn State protesters who are angry (rightfully, IMO) about the sacking of the venerated Joe Paterno following a media feeding frenzy. She notes that unlike the OWS and Wisconsin protests, “the Penn State protest instantly went into riot mode, with violence galore.” The chief targets of the protests?

The media! So, unlike the case of OWS, the cops have to DO SOMETHING!

But look at Penn State. The young people receive the news that their hero-coach got the boot, and they’re there in instant full riot mode. Why the difference? You might say it’s an outburst of pure emotion. What happened has already happened. There’s no policy to influence, no course of events to sway. There’s nothing left to do but howl. But look at that quote I put in the post title, and look at the way the attacks were directed at reporters. There does seem to be a message beyond inarticulate screams of rage and sorrow. It’s directed not at the government and not at the banks and the corporations, but at the media. The media was unfair. The media took a great man down. The protesters may be in a frenzy, but — taking that quote for all it’s worth — the media had its feeding frenzy on Joe Paterno and destroyed him overnight.

There’s a lot to think about here, but I want to highlight the anger at the media. Of all the things that are firing up protesters these days, it is the media that fired the most rage.

The media have destroyed a good man, one of the greatest foootball coaches in history,  (as well as a personal family friend) who never had anything resembling a fair hearing before them and was never convicted of anything. Plus, the man is in his mid-eighties.  All out of media speculation, uninformed popular surmise, and above all, hysteria.

Great work.


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16 responses to “in a media kangaroo court, you’re guilty even if proven innocent!”

  1. John Henry Avatar
    John Henry

    I am not a big fan of the main media. Too often they are the ones covering up.

    In this case though they did the right thing. They exposed a man who enabled a pedophile.

    Whether or not he knew Sandusky was a pedophile is beside the point. He knew of the allegation. He heard the allegation from an eyewitness to the rape of a 10 year old boy.

    And he didn’t do the right thing. He admits he didn’t do the right thing.

    How is the press reporting of this unfair to Joe Paterno?

    I think football makes people more than a bit crazy. How could you possibly not support Paterno’s immediate firing?

    It doesn’t even matter whether Sandusky anally raped a 10 year old boy or not. Paterno was told that he had and DID. NOT. REPORT. IT. TO. THE. POLICE.

    I am not sure if that is legally a crime. It is certainly a moral crime. If it is a legal crime I hope the full weight of the law is slammed down on his shoulders.

    He is 81? Fuck him. That might, possibly, maybe, work if you could claim some sort of senility or incapacity. But he is a head football coach. Would he not have to be fully there mentally?

    He knew of the allegations 10 years ago and did nothing? Fuck Joe Paterno and his football program. A 10 year old boy was anally raped and he didn’t do the right thing.

    By his own admission he didn’t do the right thing which would have been to report the allegation to the police.

    (Yeah, I am pissed)

    John Henry

  2. Captain Ned Avatar
    Captain Ned

    And the person who actually witnessed the crime is still a Penn State coach and will be working the game tomorrow.

    If JoePa had to go, why is this guy still there?

  3. Bram Avatar
    Bram

    I don’t know what, if any, guilt Paterno bears in this case. Neither does the media. For once, student rioters properly targeted their anger.

  4. Simon Avatar
    Simon

    Joe passed the information he had on to higher authority. i.e. the administration.

    It seems no one dealt with this as they should in order to keep the money rolling.

    http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/in-case-you-were-wondering/

    The link deals with another whitewash to keep the money at Penn State rolling. Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick.

  5. Eric Scheie Avatar

    If anyone can put himself in Paterno’s position, he was told about this second hand by a 28 year old man who by his own admission failed to intervene in any way or even call the cops. If someone told me he had seen what he thought was a murder the day before but had not done anything, I would tell him not to come to me but to go to the cops. How the hell would I know whether what he says happened happened or not? If I didn’t see it, I am not a witness. Aside from Sandusky, I see McQueary — not Paterno — as the primary culprit.

    Sorry, but I think what happened here was that the media simply wanted to flex its muscle and demand the head of a decent man. That they are actually trying to spin an eyewitness who did nothing as a victim defies logic.

    If JoePa had to go, why is this guy still there?

    Good question.

  6. lynndh Avatar
    lynndh

    Eric, you have blinders on.

  7. chuckR Avatar
    chuckR

    Health care professionals and teachers have a legal as well as moral obligation to report any type of abuse of children. In many states, including mine, citizens do also. (Although the state law here is ambiguous about what would constitute enough knowledge of the abuse to require reporting to the police.)

    As to PSA, this is what happens when you let things slide. The allegations in the 1998 Sandusky grand jury testimony are bad enough on their own. Coupled with McQueary’s weakly worded report to Paterno, in toto they should have led to reporting and a much more aggressive investigation. In time, the PSA community’s inaction came back to bite them on the ass.

    Unfortunately, this will be part of Paterno’s legacy, too. As my old business partner used to say, once you piss in the soup, it doesn’t matter how many vetables you add after….

  8. Jennifer Krieger Avatar

    How many kids’ lives were destroyed?

  9. Eric Scheie Avatar

    Without wearing blinders, I have read numerous accounts and reports. Paterno (a longtime family friend) was exonerated of any legal wrongdoing years ago. He has been subjected to a media circus for failing to report to the police what he did report to his university superiors: a statement by a man who claimed to be a witness, but who never called the cops and did NOTHING to prevent an atrocious crime he claims he saw in progress.

    I am standing up for Joe Paterno and against what I see as a media-driven lynch mob. I would stand up for anyone accused in a similar manner of being culpable because of the actions of someone else.

    If Paterno’s failure to call the cops was so egregious that it demanded his firing, then why wasn’t he fired in 2002? The reason is that he followed university procedures in place at the time. Penn State is a government run school, and there is a chain of command. Paterno — a non-witness — had the right to assume that what he reported would be investigated, but that investigation was not his responsibility.

    Not that anyone cares, but it has never been established that the crime which was alleged actually took place. The alleged victim has never been identified. The outcry demanding the head of Paterno rests on a very flimsy legal standard.

  10. […] I wrote a comment in which I explained why I am defending Joe Paterno, who has condemned by a number of commenters at […]

  11. JohnAGJ Avatar

    If JoePa had to go, why is this guy still there?

    That coward McQueary shouldn’t still be there and hopefully will be tossed out on his read as Paterno was. He was right to call his dad and tell Paterno, but never called the police and left that boy with Sandusky. That is beyond reprehensible.

    I personally agree with this take on the whole mess:

    http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/11/10/omelas-state-university/

  12. John Henry Avatar
    John Henry

    Captain Ned,

    Excellent point. WHY is that guy still there?

    Everything I said about Joe Paterno stands and should apply to this guy too.

    Including being fired immediately.

    I did not say this last night because I did not realize he was still at the school.

    John Henry

  13. […] have a commenter at in a media kangaroo court, you’re guilty even if proven innocent!, who left this link in the comments: Omelas State University in which science fiction writer John […]

  14. […] about this, and those who are Penn grads and/or college football fans, and/or Joe Paterno fans are particularly distressed and/or seriously […]

  15. Rich Rostrom Avatar
    Rich Rostrom

    Why did McQueary not call police? Because Sandusky was one of Paterno’s oldest and most respected cronies.

    He was utterly shocked and astonished by what he saw, and he went to The Boss – The Man In Charge – the venerated head of the organization, wrapped in four decades of supreme authority, high honors for success, and universal praise for sterling character, whom he had played for and worked for for eight years.

    And the Boss told him “I’ll deal with this.” So he shut up.

    What did The Boss do? He passed on a warning to the University that someone had seen something. But he already knew something about Sandusky from years before – 1998, the time of Sandusky’s sudden early retirement from coaching.

    Then, Sandusky probably persuaded Paterno that he’d done things which looked questionable but really weren’t, but it was better that he retire before the pseudo-scandal damaged the program.
    Paterno swallowed this, and allowed Sandusky to run his charity out of Penn State’s facilities.

    In 2004, Paterno persuaded himself that it was another pseudo-scandal, and let Sandusky and the University cover up,

    McQueary didn’t ask questions, and didn’t go to the police. One doesn’t ask such questions of The Boss. One doesn’t inform the police against a top crony of The Boss, when The Boss is silent.

    Paterno had complete unquestioned authority. The buck stopped with him. McQueary was his underling, trained by him – he did what Paterno expected.

  16. Eric Avatar

    “He was utterly shocked and astonished by what he saw.”

    You are presuming McQueary told the truth about what he saw. I think it is very likely that he was lying:

    http://classicalvalues.com/2011/11/they-had-a-better-case-against-tom-robinson/

    McQueary had worked for Paterno for years, and I think he saw an opportunity.