A panel of public relations experts gave their valuable insight on the crucial mistakes that Penn State made during wake of the Sandusky scandal at the “Integrity at a time of Crisis.” The panelist included Jim Lukaszewski, president of the Lukazweski Group; Stephen Manuel, Penn State public relations professor and Genaro Armas, Associated Press correspondent. They bought up two main ethical issues that surrounded the Penn State Sandusky scandal. One ethical issue that was bought up was the fact that Penn State did not know exactly how to respond to the crisis. Another ethical issue was that people that knew what was happening took too long to take action.
Lukazewski, one of the leading experts in the field, led the question and answer discussion by addressing the importance of ethics when responding to a crisis. According to Lukazewski staling, delaying and denying were all errors that Penn State made in addressing the Sandusky scandal. Lukazewski believes that dialing 911 is something that people should do more often. “We don’t like to report bad things,” Lukazewski said. He firmly believes that the patterns at Penn State are similar to pattern everywhere.
The fact that Penn State took so long to release a statement about the incident immediately put into people’s minds that there was something that they were hiding. Genaro whom had spent countless days and weeks reporting the Sandusky scandal shared his opinion as a reporter. He stated that cancelling the first press conference last minute was a mistake also a mistake that Penn State made. “There were a couple of incidents after that where it hit the media that this was much bigger than they thought,” Genaro said. Not administering was the start some of the issues that put Penn State in a wind of media attention. Many rumors spread throughout the media due to the way Penn State handled the crisis.
“Just 4 days after the release of the indictment, Penn State’s board of trustees—under mounting public pressure to demonstrate swift and decisive action—fired legendary head football coach Joe Paterno and dismissed several high-ranking officials, including university president Graham Spanier.” (Ott, p.331)
Manuel, Penn State public relations professor, believes that the Board of Trustees for many years has operated in a cloud of secrecy. “Silence is not golden,” Manuel said.
When facing a similar challenge the best thing to do is report the issue immediately. If someone would have reported Sandusky’s actions from the beginning although it would not have been such a media frenzy. I think that the Board of Trustees for Penn State were covering up the crime because they didn’t want Penn State to have a bad name or reputation however doing that only made things worse.
Lukazewski ended the lecture by again stressing the importance of dialing 911 “when you see something happening first and foremost pick up the phone and dial 911,” Lukazweski said. People that knew what was going did not apply the best ethical principles as to what should have been done. “There was the Pennsylvania state trooper named Joe Leiter who had a gut feeling something was wrong and pursued the investigation until he found a series of boys making similar allegations. Sandusky had already been caught twice showering with boys and yet no substantive action had been taken by the time Leiter got the case.”(Moushy)
It is still important to discuss these issues because just as this scandal occurred at Penn State it could have happened anywhere. This ethics of this case should be a lesson that everyone could learn from. Although almost everyone can differentiate between what is right and what is wrong, I have learned that no two people have the same exact ethical principles. According to Lukazewski, “Ethics is about you, your own personal belief system.”
Work Cited
Moushy, B. (2012). Few people did the right thing. Florida Times-Union, Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=155140&sr=HLEAD(Jerry Sandusky trial) and date is June 14, 2012
Ott, B. L. (2012). Unnecessary roughness : Espn’s construction of hypermasculine citizenship in the penn state sex abuse scandal. Critical Methologies, 2012(12), 330. Retrieved from http://csc.sagepub.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/content/12/4/330.full.pdf html