Had Penn State football coach Joe Paterno not been embroiled in a child sex abuse scandal at the time of his death, would his passing have brought about the same deluge of media coverage? If his death did not come just 74 days after his hasty dismissal by the Penn State board of trustees, would the story suddenly be reduced to the single dimension of mourning?

The task of disentangling the death of Joe Paterno from the big, flaming, abominable scandal that devoured or scarred everyone in its path is a difficult but worthy one. What is clarion clear, however, is that nearly all media outlets have chosen to embrace Paterno's story as a convoluted one, rendering the legendary football coach a complicated, even contradictory figure inextricably bound to a disgraced chain of command that failed to stop a sexual predator.

There were no attempts to downplay his culpability; no underscoring the fact that in 2002 when assistant coach Mike McQueary witnessed a sexual assault in the Penn State locker room and reported it to Paterno, Paterno immediately informed Athletic Director Tim Curley. In a frantic attempt to salvage the university's sunken reputation, the board immediately fired Joe Paterno and Penn State president Graham Spanier, in what amounted to the contemporary equivalent of a public hanging.

After Paterno was relieved of his duties by the Board of Trustees on November 9, things would never be the same. It was like watching the toppling of a Roman idol or the group stabbing of Caesar. The moral legitimacy of ousting Paterno wasn't important; it was the mesmerizing quality of destroying something that seemed unassailable and changeless. In other words, Paterno's measurable accountability in Jerry Sandusky's prolonged sexual abuse of children is not fully known. And if it is known, that accountability is small. What's far more important to the media and the public is turning the life of Joe Paterno into a classical tragedy, complete with glory, hubris, and the fatal flaw. Paterno's final words of remorse, stating that "I wish I had done more," provided a dramatic capstone to a short and ugly final act that was scripted and staged by news programs all along.

In terms of the editorial interests of television and radio programs, the Penn State scandal provided a vanishingly rare combination of storylines: a long history of sexual abuse, coiled for decades; a respected school and worshiped football program rapidly disgraced; and an absolute legend, a mythical figure, with a legacy suddenly hanging in the balance. Simply put, this was a reporter's perfect storm. The third element to the story would be the most important. In order to build the stakes as high as possible, the media couldn't just crucify Jerry Sandusky, despite the fact that he is the sexual predator allegedly responsible for 40 counts of abuse. Instead it set its sights on Joe Paterno, the dedicated, philanthropic beating heart of State College.

To demonize Sandusky in the media would be too self-evident. Defaming Paterno, however, would make for a far more charismatic story. Call it the allure of complexity. Here was a man who was renowned for his incredible generosity, having given over 4 million dollars to Penn State over the years, helping to raise 13.5 million dollars to expand the college library (which would later be named after him), and providing longtime support to the Special Olympics. A man who had the singular courage to attempt the "Grand Experiment" by setting the academic bar high for his scholarship athletes. This was an American who was larger than life-- not because of self-serving beauty or talent--but because of his selflessness and principles.

Now if the media could make Paterno the scapegoat of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, then all of those achievements would be direly complicated. You would suddenly have a story of incredible depth and balance; Paterno's lifetime of good deeds set against one crippling mistake. This extraordinary balance makes the story self-sustaining, like a pendulum. It could swing on and on, and never tire. The public was drawn to the complexity of the story,  of so much good flooded by so much evil, and media outlets understood this. That's why they continued to project an incongruous fantasy--Joe Paterno as the face of a massive sex abuse atrocity.

But the facts themselves present a much different picture. In 1998, a mother discovered that Jerry Sandusky had showered with her son in the Penn State locker room. She reported the incident to university police, who conducted a brief investigation. The case was closed after State College District Attorney Ray Gricar said that he would not pursue criminal charges. Four years later, in 2002, Penn State graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky having anal sex with a young boy, also in the Penn State locker room. He reported the incident to Paterno the next day. On March 3rd, 2002, a day after speaking with McQueary, Paterno reported the incident to Penn State athletic director Tim Curley.

Most timelines of the tragedy indicate that the buck stopped here. While Curley notified Sandusky's charity, The Second Mile, no other outside entities were brought in. Tim Curley and school vice president Gary Schulz are currently awaiting trial on charges of lying to a grand jury and failing to report the incident witnessed by Mike McQueary in 2002.

These facts suggest that if anyone is to be blamed for a cover-up, it is Curley and Schulz. Paterno did exactly what he was supposed to do. Nothing more, nothing less. It is Curley and Shulz that failed to meet protocol. But kangaroo courts don't like to put unknowns on trial. For this story to be as captivating as possible, Paterno would need to be implicated; only his legacy had the size and stature to incur all the public's moral outrage. So from November 5, 2011, when Sandusky was first arraigned on 40 counts of sex abuse, until Paterno's death on January 22nd, 2012, that legacy would be bruised, battered, and drained of all the goodwill it had accrued over half a century. This was a new way for a news story to thrive: by steadily demolishing an empire, one that existed both in State College, PA, and in the American zeitgeist.

Taken individually, news segments, articles, and reporters deliver facts and information. Taken together, they become the media, and no longer just deliver facts but instead construct an invisible narrative. While this narrative is itself composed entirely of those facts, it redistributes importance and discriminates emphasis. The roles of Sandusky, Curley, Shulz and Spanier in the Penn State scandal were greatly diminished by media outlets.  Despite their key roles  in the scandal, they have been relegated to minor, peripheral stations. The role of Joe Paterno, only marginally significant according to the facts, has been blown up. Thus a media narrative is created, out of facts, yes, but distorted and rearranged ones. Sure, it makes for a more compelling story. But what happens when that story, really just a collectively constructed fiction, not only distorts the facts, but distorts a person's life?

Author Bio:

Mike Mariani is an adjunct English professor and freelance writer.