A week ago today the college sports world was looking forward to the much anticipated match-up of Stanford and Oregon after a pivotal LSU victory over Alabama. However, the sports talk radio hosts were not talking about the heated BCS standings or even the prolonged NBA lockout. It was all about the scandal at Penn State. Now what can there be a better talking point then the NBA going without a season or the "Battle of the Century"?

The media did find something else to talk about however, they learned of a secret scandal that had been covered up for over 10 years. A Penn State assistant coach had been raping young boys in the showers of the Penn State facilities and there was a witness. The witness reports it to the Head Coach, Paterno, who then passes the information on to his superiors, school administration. Upon hearing this information the media explodes and every hour of the next 5 or 6 days listeners get to listen in and hear why Paterno is such an evil man for not taking the information directly to the Police.

Through my research of the Twitter and searching what people really think about Paterno I have found a few hovering themes. The first theme is that everyone has jumped on the "Paterno should be fired" bandwagon. The excuse of the masses is that Paterno should have reported to the police about the allegations of the rape in addition to reporting it to his superiors. The media had a hard line that they followed in this instance, they believe that Paterno should have been forced to quit for his lack involvement in the release of this important information regarding the molestation of little boys.

The second theme I noticed was that many people were angered by the fact that students were "rioting" over the Paterno firing because it put the focus on football and not on the victims. However, I believe that it was the media that put all the attention on Paterno because if they had just covered the story on the fact that so many youth were sexually abused and we shoud help them. then none of this hate would have come Paterno's way. the media solely put the focus on his shoulders that he should stop coaching immediately.

The final theme I saw arise was the fact that everyone believed this was a horrible situation and no one had anything god to say about it. It is crazy to hear a truly saddening situation where no one has a positive twist on it. Luckily, there are people who are posting information for people who need help dealing with their issues of sexual abuse; there can be healing even in the mist of pain.

The issue with the media is they can and will push whatever idea they have, or even what people want to hear. So in this situation people want to hear about how a terrible situation could have been "fixed". And this is a powerful message, the media does have the influence to affect how people think and what is most likely going to be on their mind. I believe with the improvement of media the strength and power of media is only going to increase because it is everywhere, 24/7. It is the responsibility of the general public to their research and find out exactly what happened and to not jump to the first conclusions that the media comes to. Media is a business and it sells on what people what to read or what intrigues people and it is an individuals' responsibility to find out the truth.

Michael Hudak

Kin 577