Reliable Sources
Sara Ganim, the Patriot-News journalist who broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Penn State’s Jerry Sandusky, tells CNN’s Howard Kurtz that it didn’t get much national attention initially because the local news organization was “well-sourced on background.”
Ganim says she’s been working on the story for years and picked up rumors.
“I spent a lot of time knocking on doors and getting shooed off properties but a few times we did get through to people and people were able to tell us that these rumors were correct.”
The 24-year-old Penn State grad told Kurtz that this work was business as usual:
I’m a crime reporter, I’m not a football reporter. This is what I do. This is just like every other crime story that I report. You can’t tell yourself you can’t have emotions. That’s unrealistic. We’re human beings. All reporters are. What you have to do is keep it out of your reporting. Keep it out of your story. So if that means that at the end of the day you gotta have 15 minutes when you let it out to your mother or to a friend or to your boss, you do it. But it has to stay out of your reporting and that’s the way I’ve always operated.
Related: Ganim tells WGN radio “I have to give a lot of credit to my boss.” | Other news editors say they tried to follow Ganim’s initial story, but didn’t get anywhere (AJR) || Watch the five-minute CNN interview:
