What do we talk about when we talk about Penn State?
by: Pamela Mejia
posted on Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Child sexual abuse isn’t just about courtrooms and arraignments, but you wouldn’t know it to read the newspaper: Too often, coverage focuses on the details of high profile, scandalous cases but ignores the cultural and institutional environments that fostered the abuse. Now we have an unprecedented opportunity to examine both at once.
The news is currently inundated with stories about the alleged sex abuse at Penn State, which has created a storm of controversy about sports, university politics, and the responsibility of leaders like disgraced coach Joe Paterno. Like media coverage of many stories on child sexual abuse, the reporting on Penn State bemoans how something so horrific could have happened and expresses outrage on behalf of the victims. But the coverage is unique in that it explicitly illustrates how institutional dynamics beyond the immediate perpetrator and victim contributed to the abuse: Many members of the university administration, including legendary coach Joe Paterno, knew that there were concerns about assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, but no one took more than perfunctory steps to find out more.
BMSG’s recent analysis of typical child sexual abuse coverage showed that news stories about child sexual abuse rarely focus on anything beyond the criminal justice details of specific cases. Since media coverage so strongly affects how we think and talk about issues, I wonder if those kinds of stories, which focus only on criminal justice responses to child sexual abuse, limit our awareness of the institutional policies that may foster child sexual abuse and the policies that could prevent it before it happens. But stories about Penn State aren’t as narrowly focused because Sandusky’s actions were so inextricably linked to the systemic policies that enabled him: Frank Bruni’s recent New York Times article about the failure of institutional self-regulation is an example of a story that puts the horrific incidents at Penn State into a larger context and addresses prevention.
Child sexual abuse prevention is important: We need news stories that talk concretely about prevention and the broader context to help us envision what policies or actions can help us achieve it. Advocates from the child sexual abuse prevention community must think critically about how to use insights from the reporting on Penn State to shape future coverage of child sexual abuse. They are uniquely poised to seize this turbulent moment and shape how the media talk about prevention of child sexual abuse, to ensure both that future coverage addresses the systemic elements that foster child sexual abuse, and to highlight policies that will protect another generation of children, at Penn State and beyond.