When in doubt, blame the media.

It has become common practice for those caught in a web of lies, corruption, or even sickening deviant behavior.

It is also the single most tired, overused excuse those painted into a corner break out.

"The media is out to get me," is a popular cliché of the damned. "The media is making more of this than what is there," is another.

And while it is true that there are some media creations that need not be (everything Kardashian comes to mind), that is not the case with the scandal in Happy Valley. However, there are some that are trying to divert the conversation.

Tuesday night, in a misguided attempt to circle the wagons around the legend that is Joe Paterno, hundreds of students and supporters congregated on the old man's front lawn. While many of my colleagues were sickened at this display of support, I tried to accept it with a grain of salt. After all, these were just kids looking for something to be a part of.

To be sure, it was certainly a show of immaturity. Do the people that were throwing their chants of approval to the all-time winningest coach in Division I college football history really condone his inactivity in the wake of the heinous deeds that were committed upon innocent children by his top lieutenant?

I seriously doubt it.

When I was an undergrad at UW-Oshkosh in the early 1990's we burned couches and rioted over a house party getting raided. Was a routine police bust really worthy of all of that property damage, arrests, and general mayhem? I think the answer is obvious.

If nothing else, it showed how mature we were, and thus ready to handle the responsibility of drinking at a younger age.

That same mentality was in play last night. These kids don't condone someone that in practice (if not words in hindsight) condones the raping of children. Rather, they got swept up into an opportunity to be on television as part of an overall mob mentality. Tuesday night's display should be ignored because it is nothing but a distraction. The job of the media, in this case, is to keep focused on what is important, not some stupid college kids.

The role of a free press, and thus the first amendment to the constitution, was set up to be a watchdog for corruption.

Over the course of time, investigative journalism has uncovered the horrors of the meatpacking industry in the case of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." In television's infancy, CBS' Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly took on the United States government by investigating and exposing the unnecessary hell that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was inflicting on anyone he thought might be a communist even in the absence of proof.

The term "Watergate" would not still be in the lexicon almost 40 years after the fact if not for the efforts of Woodward and Bernstein.

More recently and back here in the sports world, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams took on baseball's drug culture in the groundbreaking "Game of Shadows." Yahoo! Sports investigative reporter Charles Robinson has been mentioned as a Pulitzer Prize contender for his work in exposing the improper benefits scandal within the University of Miami football program.

In all of these cases, the media acted proper and responsible, even if those brought down did not see it that way.

In the case of Joe Paterno, et al in State College, PA, all the media did was present the evidence the grand jury came back with.

From there, the public outrage grew to the point of no escape.

It did not take the media to point out that Paterno's inaction "likely allowed a child predator to continue to victimize children for many, many years." That was said by Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly.

It did not take the media to slap the handcuffs on a child rapist that used his charitable foundation as a de-facto waiting room for his victims. The cuffs were slapped on Jerry Sandusky by police acting on a warrant issued by the grand jury after a three year investigation.

It did not take the media to arrest athletic director Tim Curley and University Senior Vice President Gary Schultz on charges of perjury. Those warrants were issued before any of us in the Fourth Estate even knew of the story.

What the media's role must be in this scandal is to point out the hypocrisies within the Penn State hierarchy. Those are the questions that need to be answered.

Why was Jerry Sandusky still allowed to work out in the Penn State weight room as late as last week?

Why was  Sandusky told by Paterno in 1998 that he would not be the next head coach of the Nittany Lions when so many believed that was the longtime succession plan? Was that because of the original police investigation of Paterno's longtime second-in-command showering with and fondling young boys? Certainly Paterno was aware of the investigation; it is impossible for him to not have known.

If so, then why wasn't anything said then about Sandusky's continued involvement in Second Mile? If Sandusky was a known pedophile by Paterno and others as early as 1998, how was he allowed the access necessary in 2002 to sodomize a 10-year old boy in that same locker room shower he was allegedly banned from?

Paterno obviously believed Mike McQuerey, then just a graduate assistant, when he was told that a naked Sandusky was acting inappropriately with an equally naked boy in the shower room back in 2002. After all, McQuerey, then very low on the totem pole, was accusing a beloved Penn State icon of gross malfeasance.

Today, McQuerey is still on Paterno's staff, now as the Nittany Lions wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. If the old man didn't believe him, McQuerey would have been very quickly ushered out the door for daring to accuse a legend like Sandusky of such an abhorrent act.

But of course Paterno did believe him. Paterno knew of the other incident in the shower four years earlier, and who knows how many other incidents that the police never got involved with.

And yet he did nothing.

In announcing his retirement via written statement, Paterno said that "with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more," in the understatement of the century. Good luck playing the rest of this season out with the specter of college sports' worst scandal in history hanging over your head.

But the question now becomes, even with the knowledge of the grand jury investigation of three years and with a pretty good idea of what the outcome would be, how was Jerry Sandusky still welcome anywhere near the Penn State football program?

These are the questions that need to be answered, not why a bunch of kids paraded around like fools on Tuesday night. The courts will mete out what punishments, if any, will be doled out to those that knew of (and subsequently covered up) Sandusky's reign of terror. Sandusky himself will be in prison for the rest of his life once he is convicted.

We in the media now need to shift our focus from anger and disbelief to getting to the root of how this was allowed to fester in the first place. Towards Sandusky, we are all outraged. Outrage is the universal emotion in this case, despite some loud kids on a lawn trying to change the discussion.

Many believe that Paterno should be fired today, but by whom? The same university president, Graham Spanier, who has done and said every wrong thing imaginable since the case broke over the weekend?

If you believe that Paterno should be out today, I cannot argue with that sentiment. The most important thing, however, is that he does move on, whether that is today or in two months. In all honesty it really isn't that important when you look at the case in its totality. No matter whom the official stat sheet says the coach is there will be no escape from this black cloud for anyone associated with the Penn State football program.

One thing Paterno was correct in his statement of Tuesday morning announcing his retirement was, "At this time, the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address." Truer words have rarely been spoken.

The Penn State University Board of Trustees never has had more to do. They have to deal with Spanier, who should also be fired; they have to hire a new athletic director; and most importantly, they have to restore the public's faith in an institution that has failed them in so many different ways.

How that is accomplished, I don't know. A clean sweep is step one. But to continually and sanctimoniously direct our ire at Paterno, Sandusky, or a bunch of drunken kids on a lawn won't help Penn State move forward. It might feel like the right thing to do, but at the end of the day, we are right back to where we started from. Answering the hard questions of how this happened in the first place may be the only thing that prevents it from occurring again.

That is what the media needs to begin focusing on.