In covering Penn State, ESPN goes too far

The Penn State scandal was one of the most severe, and heavily covered, outrages in history of collegiate athletics. In order to maintain transparency in any field, incisive, investigating journalism is paramount to proper reporting. However, at times news agencies involuntarily or not lose track of why and what they are covering for the sake of personal achievement. The happenings and coverage of the Penn State debacle is a perfect example of this exploitation.

When this story first began to take shape in the media, Sara Ganim of The Patriot-News was leading the pack in the pursuit of answers surrounding what exactly had happened, and who had concealed information. Aside from the arrest of Jerry Sandusky, these questions eventually also dragged down head coach Joe Paterno, school president Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim Curley as secondary responsible parties.

The story blew up and gained widespread national media attention. ESPN, Yahoo! and other grand sports news agencies began to take prominent roles covering every detail of the scandal. And this is where news became tabloid.

While ESPN is already famous for beating stories into the ground (see Tebow, Tim), their coverage of Penn State went from all-encompassing to excessive for the sake of ratings.

Fast forward to late August of 2012, after the allegations, after the punishment and after most of the dust settled. As a new season of college football was underway, many eyes were on how Penn State would do in the face of arguably their most challenging season to date. However, ESPN took their news coverage a step further and decided to nationally televise Penn State’s pep rally the day before their first game.

While sweeping coverage is necessary and effective in journalism, ESPN went from reporting on a story to taking advantage of a situation where profit could be gained. To my knowledge, ESPN did not televise any other college pep rally this season.

By televising, and thus advertising, the Penn State rally, they took advantage of an event that would attract viewers, and thus ignored the victims and negativity of a situation for their own benefit.

While modern journalism entities are struggling to gain enough profit to stay afloat, a line must be drawn between integrity and entertainment. ESPN, in their constant efforts to squeeze ratings and money out of a story, crossed that line and became an entertainment entity while posing as a journalistic one. By broadcasting Penn State’s understandably positive rally, ESPN became directly involved with a story they themselves were covering rather than acting as an impartial observer, which could be seen as an ethical violation, at least by the standards of their own field.