ABC News’ This Week with Christiane Amanpour’s Interviews On The Penn State Scandal

I believe this is the second or third time I have posted a Sunday network news program transcript. The other times have been for Super Bowl interviews on the Sunday news programs. This one deals with the Penn State story and comes from ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour. This morning, the University of Rhode Island Journalism graduate talked with Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and USA Today’s Christine Brennan about the developments last week at Penn State regarding the alleged child molestations by former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

I mention Amanpour’s URI connection only for the fact that she and I attended URI at the same time, but she attended school in Providence while I was in Kingston, so we never met. I did know CNN’s John King who went to URI , but that’s neither here nor there.

Here’s the press release.

GOVERNOR TOM CORBETT ON “THIS WEEK WITH CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR”

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2011

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett speaks with Christiane Amanpour about the sex abuse scandal at Penn State that has exploded into public view. Plus, USA Today columnist and ABC News contributor Christine Brennan provides her insights on the sex abuse investigation and the culture of college football.  

A transcript of “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” airing this morning, November 13, 2011 on ABC News is below. 

Christiane Amanpour is the anchor of “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.” Rick Kaplan is the executive producer. The program airs Sundays on the ABC Television Network (check local listings). Visit the “This Week” website to read more about the show at: www.abcnews.go.com/thisweek

-ABC-

TRANSCRIPT:

AMANPOUR:  So an eventful week on the campaign trail, but not enough to eclipse the story that continues to shock America, the unfolding scandal at Penn State, the outrage of a revered coach and esteemed university president looking the other way as an alleged pedophile preyed on children.

Yesterday, the Nittany Lions took to the field for the first time since the sordid story spilled into the open. Before kickoff, a moment of silence, as players dropped to their knees in recognition of the young victims. The (Nittany) Lions lost the game, their first without Coach Joe Paterno. And this morning, emotions on campus and around the state remain raw.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett was the attorney general who began investigating accused sexual predator Jerry Sandusky, and he joins me now from Harrisburg. Governor, thank you for joining me.
CORBETT:  Thank you for having me on, Christiane.

AMANPOUR:  Let — let me just ask you, why do you think it took this sort of public shaming for the university to finally act? Why do you think everyone, basically, hid this thing for so long, from the president to Coach Paterno?
CORBETT:  Well, Christiane, first, I have to put on the record that it’s hard for me to talk about a lot of the — the past. We have to look to the future, because I was the attorney general involved in the investigation. I have certain ethical rules that I have to follow.

But I would note that the board of trustees has appointed Ken Frazier to lead the investigation, along with my secretary of education, to determine exactly the question that you’re asking. What happened? Why did it happen? And most importantly, how does the university move on from here? I think that you saw yesterday a very good outpouring of support for everyone. When those two teams came together and, really, that whole stadium came together with those two teams.

AMANPOUR:  Well, let me — let me ask you, because this is obviously massively serious. And I understand your ethical and legal obligations. However, don’t you think that the mere risk that somebody who you’ve been investigating for more than two years, the mere risk that he could have continued to abuse during this investigation, demanded a call to the police? Should that not have been, at the very least, something that the coach, that the president should have done?
CORBETT:  We would have expected law enforcement to have been involved much sooner than it got involved. And as you know from newspaper reports, our office, as the attorney general became involved, not in a case related to the university, but in a case from a next-door county, Clinton County, and a school there, where Mr. Sandusky was helping out as a coach.

AMANPOUR:  Do you think others are going to be held accountable? How far up do you think that this should go? Do you think Coach Paterno is going to face legal issues?
CORBETT:  Well, as you know, again, Attorney General Linda Kelly has already said at this point that he’s not a subject of the investigation. And she stopped at that point. When you have investigations like this — and I’m not going to talk about this one — but the one thing you learn when you’re conducting investigations is that, as people face charges, they may start to cooperate, they may start talking about different things. The investigation is an ongoing one. So, because of that, I can’t make projections or speculation as to where this may go.

AMANPOUR:  Well, let me ask you about the former graduate assistant coach, Mike McQueary, who allegedly witnessed Sandusky actually raping a child at Penn State in 2002, but did not intervene. You have said that if you — if it had been you, you would have intervened. Why do you think that he didn’t? And why do you think that that was not taken up the chain of command?
CORBETT:  That’s a good question for Coach McQueary, as to why something didn’t happen. I’m sure it’s going to be answered at some point in time during the course of the facts being revealed in this investigation over the course of a trial. Mr. McQueary is a witness in this trial. And I’m sure that the facts will be determined as to exactly how far up that knowledge was passed through the chain of command.

AMANPOUR:  Do you think that Joe Paterno should have come out and actually talked to the students about what happened, instead of just allowing this rioting to go on, I mean, take some responsibility?
CORBETT:  Well, it’s not for me to figure out what’s going through Joe Paterno’s mind. Certainly, he was under a great deal of pressure, a shock that he’d just been told that he was no longer the coach of Penn State. And I think your question was one that you have to deliver to him.

AMANPOUR:  What do you think?  Do you think adults should take responsibility for so brazenly failing children?
CORBETT:  Well, in my role as attorney general, my role as a U.S. attorney, and now as governor, I believe adults should always stand up for children.

AMANPOUR:  Governor, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us.
CORBETT:  Thank you.

AMANPOUR:  And clearly, in this case, they didn’t. For some perspective on the Penn State story, let’s bring in USA Today sportswriter Christine Brennan.

Christine, what happened? Is this really just yet another example of how hallowed these sports teams are, how untouchable they are on college campuses?
BRENNAN:  Absolutely, Christiane. Let’s look at the culture of college football. McQueary, of course, is the man, as you just mentioned, who witnessed — allegedly witnessed this rape of a 10-year-old boy in the showers at Penn State. And I believe he thought he was doing a lot, that he was going above and beyond by going to Joe Paterno’s house the next day and telling the revered coach what he saw.

In this case, unfortunately, in this world of college football, Joe Paterno is bigger than the police. These college programs, people love them. People watch them. I’ve been around them for decades. And they kind of go into hibernation in July or August, and they come up for air in January, after the bowl games, and they’re living in an entirely different world than you and I.

And so the fact that this man saw this reprehensible thing and, as I said, I believe we’ll find out that he thought he was going above and beyond by going to Joe Paterno’s house on a day off to tell the coach. And I think that tells us all we need to know about how out-of-control college football programs are.

AMANPOUR:  And discussing with my fellow round-tablers and others, I mean, at the very least perhaps he could have gone and stopped it, stopped what he was seeing happening in front of his eyes.

But let me ask you.  Everybody’s sort talking about this as if it’s only just come out into the open. As you well know, the Harrisburg local newspaper started reporting this, you know, last March, March of this year, and yet nothing was said about it. It didn’t have a ripple effect. How do you explain that?
BRENNAN:  It’s stunning, except for the fact that — and in the Internet day and age, too, of course, where you would think this story would get some traction. This is such a monumental disaster and such a window into the world of this fiefdom, this world of not only college football, but Penn State, where, as you know, the president of the university said after reading the grand jury — those 23 awful pages of the grand jury report, the president, Graham Spanier, said that — called the charges “groundless” and gave his unconditional support to the two men who now are gone from the team — or from the university.

So I think that there was such a culture, a groupthink that was either in denial or either knew about Sandusky and didn’t want to go any further with it, we’ll get to those answers eventually. But you’re right. How in the world does — you know, this explodes and you have this reaction all week, and yet, as you said, people in Pennsylvania have known about this for years.

AMANPOUR:  And just very briefly, is there any realistic thought that this kind of thing will be corrected? And, of course, this is the extreme of an ongoing list of things that go on. Anything goes, win at all costs in college sports. Is there any way that you think this will really not happen again?
BRENNAN:  It’s a great question.  And I think the hope really comes in if the university president — if the outrage is so extreme, university presidents, maybe 20 or 25, get together and say, “This has got to stop,” and they take back their universities from these run-amok college football programs and other college sports that are causing so much trouble.

AMANPOUR:  Christine Brennan, thank you so much, indeed, for joining us.

We’ll move to the Sunday NFL pregame quotage next.

About Ken Fang

Ken has been covering the sports media in earnest at his own site, Fang's Bites since May 2007 and at Awful Announcing since March 2013. He provides a unique perspective having been an award-winning radio news reporter in Providence and having worked in local television. Fang celebrates the three Boston Red Sox World Championships in the 21st Century, but continues to be a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan.

Quantcast