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Lou Prato's Been Around Big News Stories All Of His life And He Is Around One Now The Jerry Sandusky Sex-Abuse Scandal At Penn State.

Lou Prato's been around major news stories all of his life and he is 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 Varsity to rejoin the Penn State community, where he earned his journalism degree in 1959. After writing The Penn State football Encyclopedia, he became the 1st director of the Penn State All-sports Museum. Now retired from the college, he 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 educational references include twelve years as head of Northwestern University's broadcast graduate program in Washington. For a long time he was a columnist and contributing writer for the American Journalism Review.

Many stories directors know him for his more than 35-year stint on the board of the Radio-Television News Directors Organisation (now the Radio TV Digital Stories Organisation), including twenty-two years as its treasurer.

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

Never one to mince his words, he spoke about his feelings with Contributing Editor P.J. Bednarski in a series of e-mails, excerpted below.

I know the unpleasant things are claimed to have occurred with those children sicken you. But My opinion is that on a journalistic level, you are confounded by the coverage.

Concern about the coverage is nothing in comparison to the simple concern all Penn Staters have for the sufferers of child abuse and their youngsters, and I mean that sincerely.

But the way almost all of the media continues to portray Penn State, the people who work and live here, the scholars and faculty, the university's football team and even our alumni base, one might get the point this entire area is inhabited by a horde of vicious, heartless child sex abusers. One satellite tv talk show host called the second Mile "a molestation farm." Come on!

Now the many insincere, self-serving, second-guessing critics in the media and the gullible, blood-thirsty public they stir up and influence have made Penn State symbolic of all that is bad in the American culture that is till the media moves on to another shark fest, leaving in its wake a whole life taint of Penn Say will never go away irrespective of what the ultimate truth may be.

I am worn out arguing, discussing and pondering everything that has happened to Penn State, to me, my folks and plenty of my friends in the last couple of weeks, and it is difficult to believe everything reported so far by the grand jury. Additionally, it is even more tricky to believe Joe Paterno was so morally deficient as his millions of baying critics 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 especially in academia and I cannot believe Tim is a liar and morally deficient. OK, I understand. I and hundreds, or perhaps 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'll never watch, listen to, and read the news or watch or listen to talk shows as I had before.

You know what injures me the most, besides what could have occurred to those boys? I used to be 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 each side of the story, never to assume, and to not interject my personal or political principles into any story.

I was also instructed how to be careful of the personal agendas of sources as well as my personal, to be suspicious of whom to trust, to be skeptical but pragmatic, to fight the enticement to be first without first assuring you have it right, and to never report a rumour just because you may believe it to be correct. My, how idealistic and old skool.

Perhaps you don't see it being so close and personal to this story, but this is what a large amount of folk would say media do with stories like these all of the time.

Look, there were times in my career I did not 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 twenty years. I am sure there are many thousands still working in the newsrooms of this country who share my perspective.

There's been good reporting on the nation's level, but I'm abashed, embarrassed and I'm irritated at how a large group of the media has reported and researched this story with such a pile-on mentality. The rush to judgment, the speculation, the innuendo, the outrageous commentary based basically on a grand jury report that is yet to be proven in the court of law. It has ruined the stature of many of us as well as Penn State University and the entire State School area community.

It's offensive to me that a large share of the media and the general public has made up its mind without waiting for all the facts to come out thru the court process that Joe Paterno is the ultimate villain here for what he did or didn't do not Jerry Sandusky and that Penn State and any person even tangentially connected with Penn State is answerable for what happened. The criticism is vicious and most of all, so self-righteous. Not simply the scurrilous web sites, where you might expect it, but supposed "legitimate media" web sites too. If you would like more examples, read and see them on the Internet yourself.

Well, you worked for the athletic program. Did you not hear anything?

For the record, the 1st I heard of Sandusky's claimed and I continue to use that word as I was first given training to do in journalism school child abuse was in mid-June of 2009 when I was volunteering for the once a year fund raising 2nd Mile golfing competition. I did not know Jerry well, but I had been around him at golfing contests and I had interviewed him two times.

I was more mystified than shocked. I remember. I announced, "Jerry??? You have got to be kidding!" I knew nothing of what was then the two reported situations in 1998 and 2002, and like others I was shocked by the 23-page report to the grand jury. It's sickening and tough to read but I did.

I know you suspect some local hacks did some good solid reporting on this. But why failed to this story come out sooner?

There are three correspondents who were on it. Sara Ganim, once the crime correspondent for the Centre Daily Times, who broke the first public news of the enquiry after she had continued on to the Harrisburg Patriot-News ; Gary Sinderson, a vet "one man band" reporter-photographer for WJAC in Johnstown, who knows the Pennsylvania court system and this community inside out ; and Pat Boland, the reporter-newsman for the local dual-ownership State College radio stations WRSC and ESPNRadio1450. He helped Ganim in her first job fresh out of Penn Country's journalism program in May 2008. You do not hear much about Pat as he keeled over from brain cancer at the age of 42 in early July but he was deep into the tale.

Ganim appears like a throwback to the journalism of my youth, and based on what I have observed, she seems to have more judgment and street smarts than many of her older, more experienced media peers in Pennsylvania and nationally. She is just 24 and has to be slightly overpowered with a story like this. I just hope that she does not slip into the sloppiness that commonly infects other young reporters who are overtaken by their ego when they find themselves on top of a giant nationwide story.

On this Sandusky story, I call Ganim, Sinderson and Boland "The Three Musketeers." They did not share all of their information, but like many writers some place else they often collaborated on their research. It's no surprise that Ganim has been the front-runner in informing the general public of this story. Paper journalists and many TV correspondents, particularly in the major markets, can do that. Sinderson and Boland were hampered by the medium they were in, the range of needs dictated by their categorical roles mixed with the need to get folk to chat publicly on the air, disguising their faces or voices when necessary. That restrictions plenty of things.

Sinderson is my sort of old-time correspondent, and he's not your average cameraman or videographer. It was Sinderson who first discovered the grand jury's report was posted on the Internet that fateful Friday, Nov. Four placed there one day too early by mistake and then he posted it on his station's website, and then he shocked Ganim with the news report.

But these reporters must have known a lot was going on long before November.

Outsiders have questioned the local media and regional media for not revealing more of Sandusky's claimed grave misdemeanours ; of not informing the general public sooner than this past spring of the enquiry ; and, most egregious of all, of not reporting the unproven rumours that were swirling around the community.

Yet, look it up. Ganim's first Patriot-News story of the enquiry was on March 31. It barely made a ripple even in Harrisburg and State School. Check out Ganim's initial story that may still be found on the Internet. There were just 6 comments from Internet readers at the time two of them doubtful. Now, folks have gone back to read it and there are a load more comments now. But Ganim has announced publicly she was shocked by all that lack of interest,writes tagza.com.

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