ESPN was slow this week to grasp the full implications of the recent criminal indictments at Penn State University...
...With the biggest staff of sports journalists in the world, ESPN should have been leading the charge to ask tough questions and shed light on this scandal. Instead, it was the tiny Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. out in front of the journalism pack. Their reporters
managed to track down two mothers of boys Sandusky allegedly abused. And the paper had the leadership to write
a front-page editorial calling for Penn State trustees to clean house.
Meanwhile, the tone of the early ESPN coverage was spotty -- sometimes getting it right, but more often seeming inappropriate. It wasn't until mid-afternoon Tuesday that ESPN finally seemed consistently to ask the right questions and find the appropriate moral outrage. That's 72 hours after the story first broke.