Sport Scandal

The Communication Role in the Penn State Scandal

The Penn State scandal was difficult because of the public outrage the sex abuse that allegedly occurred. If, as it appears the university knew for years of the accusations against Sandusky, a good Crisis Communication Plan would have instructed communicators to prepare holding statements. At the same time, the leaders should have taken a firm action against Sandusky, and then proactively held a news conference to expose the allegations. The financial impact and fall out to the coaching staff would have been significantly smaller had the university’s leadership exposed this smoldering crisis on their own terms years ago. Instead, needless mass firing followed blame was placed on the wrong people revenues dropped significantly and the brand image for a long time to come.  The role of communication I saw from the scandal was poor communications; the smoldering issues that reached a flash point could have been controlled through the crisis management. There was also arrogance and denial by those in leadership positions, as well as the influence of the social media in escalating the flash point and outcome of the crisis.

Some other communication mistake that was made is the PR representative should have never delayed a response to the allegations. If they simply came out front to admit fault and state what they planned to do about the issue, could have avoided a lot of scrutiny. Joe Paterno was wrongly advised to cancel the weekly Penn State news conference; he should have faced the public and promptly clarified any misconceptions.  Penn’s State public relations representatives did not have an established plan to follow and did not stay informed about the allegations; they did not respond quick enough and also their clients best interest was not in mind.

The lack of communication and organization led to Penn’s State catastrophe, but there is a lot to learn from this example in order to prevent similar predicaments from occurring in the future.