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Since Beeze brought us the Tim Joyce investigative report on the Sex Abuse Scandal within the USA Olympic Swim team both of us have spent a good deal of time trying to get this story sent out to the very media Joyce calls out. We were up until nearly 4 am Monday morning; this is the time of day where newsrooms around the country and their producer’s are putting together the morning broadcasts and we got an unusual amount of traffic as we spent a good 90 minutes tweeting the link to both the Gab and WBAL sites for them to see exactly what it was that outraged us. At the end of the day you’ll be really surprised who picked up this story, a little online newspaper in Toronto Canada called “The People at Risk Daily”, and we thank Lisa A. McLeod for doing so, she clearly gets it, but CNN, ESPN, NBC, every news anchor and top gun reporter (and yes B.O.B., even Bill O’Reilly got one from me) could not have been less interested.
In the last 48 hours I’ve been reeling over this, all the while I can scan the channels and see Olympic Coverage, Olympic Coverage, Olympic Coverage, Spoiler Alert, Gabby Douglas etc…USA Swim Scandal? Nada! The cowards Joyce speaks of in the mainstream media, you know the ones who have to answer to a higher authority before ever airing anything without the stamp of approval from the “Politcal Correctness Department” because it’s taboo to step on the toes of the likes of NBC and the billions they doled out for Olympic broadcast rights, or ESPN who can’t offend anything or anyone in sports until it’s obvious the rest of the planet will hang the offender out to dry too, i.e. Jerry Sandusky. Part of what’s wrong here very well could be Joyce’s timing of the story. Joyce’s story hit the web July 31st, the Games were underway and if you’re working on an Olympic story whether it’s a competitor fluff piece or a hard story like this you’d think timing shouldn’t matter, it’s about the USA Olympic Swim team, it talks about the very coaches who are now being investigated for said abuse but that’s not what Bob Costas is going to be allowed to talk about after interviewing Michael Phelps who just broke the Olympic medal record…just can’t have it. When Beeze posted the story at the Gab early Monday morning we weren’t even 24 hours into the shooting of the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, that got top bill and rightfully so, but my problem is why is a news organization like CNN or FOX News not able to cover more than one top story, they do it all the time and on a slow news day they still manage to fill their slots with plenty of crap to keep their anchors talking.
I started thinking; just maybe the reason isn’t the timing of the games as much as it is the story has “USA Swimming” in the title and not Penn State. It sure seemed pretty easy to point the finger at a school in a college town, say the administration and coaches covered it up, district attorney’s and police departments knew but basically looked the other way while Sandusky molested boys in the Nittany Lion locker room shower stalls, as I recall no one died, but Sandusky went to trial, was publicly humiliated, Paterno was forced out as head coach and into the grave. I’m not minimizing the abuse of Sandusky, personally I look forward to the day there’s breaking news he was found swinging in his cell, I’ll be more than okay with that sound bite. But when we’ve got numerous coaches, suicide, sexual abuse, cover-ups, a girl who got pregnant from a coach, there’s something seriously wrong when no one wants to ask the question - What the hell is going on with the USA Olympic Swim team and why hasn’t anyone appointed a special prosecutor from the US Attorney’s office? Why hasn’t a congressman asked why is this being swept under the rug? Oh yeah, it’s an election year, they have bigger fish to fry, their careers. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemons got more attention than this and that was for perjury about steroid abuse…(is this making sense to any of you yet)? Why, because they were multi-million dollar, high profile athletes that makes it okay? Where are our priorities? I’m sorry, when the safety of young girls (and most of you know I have a daughter so you know where my anger is coming from) are being compromised by the very coaches entrusted by parents to train them to represent our country and it’s covered up for the sake of the reputation of an organized sport and the ole boy network that oversees it I can’t fathom why this isn’t front and center and I’m not seeing headlines with coaches being escorted into police stations cuffed and jackets hiding their faces, just like Jerry Sandusky...this story mirrors Penn State in so many ways. The differences, it's on a much larger scale, over a longer period of time, involves not one but many coaches and children and 16 year Sarah Burt walked herself in front of a tractor trailer and committed suicide. Yeah, it makes you just scratch your head doesn't it?...or want to go out and hurt someone.
B.O.B I believe was who made the comment that when the games were over, the closing ceremonies have concluded and athletes, networks and reporter’s come home this might just rear its ugly head. I thought the same thing too. If that’s the case, I won’t be surprised, but I’ll have a lot of mixed emotions if I do see it. First, I’ll be extremely pissed off if I hear Erin Burnett, Kyra Phillips or Soledad O’Brien talking about this like they just found out about it, that I can assure you isn’t the case, they all got it the morning Beeze and I tweeted “talking heads” from here to the moon and back. If Bill O’Reilly talks about it I’ll be glad FOX covered it instead of pumping sunshine up Mitt Romney’s ass while we still listen to him and Harry Reid trade barbs over Mitt’s tax records, because in the grand scheme of things, this is what I really want to know about. Wrong! Sure, I’ll be glad to see this get the attention it deserves, but God help whoever it is that does so if they got this story originally from us, I’ll be calling them out for doing exactly what it is I believe they’re doing, lying in wait to pounce when the timing is just right - after the games. Which we all know is the wrong reason, it’s just the politically correct reason, and that’s horse shit.
Sarah Burt deserves better, her family deserves better. Tim Joyce deserves the same recognition for having the guts to break this story as Sarah Ganim got when breaking the Sandusky story, and we all know that story wasn’t really “breaking news” either, it was a story that resurfaced on the heels of one reporter who was just not going to take NO for an answer. I’m here to say, I’m not taking NO for an answer either.
Got to go now, I need to tweet the hell out of this to the same mainstream media that ignored the last story and I suggest you all do the same…don’t you take NO for an answer either.
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