Did media coverage of Joe Paterno fan the fire — or was this a story that would have burst into flame no matter what? Christopher Harper, associate professor of journalism at Temple, was with ABC's 20/20 in 1989 when the show did an exposé of child-abuse charges against Catholic priests. "The issue here," says Harper, "is that sexual abuse of minors by authority figures exists throughout the country. Thirty years ago, it wasn't so much of a story. But by now, we are used to realizing it's something we all have to acknowledge." Julia Ericksen, a Temple sociologist and author of Kiss and Tell: Surveying Sex in the Twentieth Century, isn't happy with the media coverage, especially the abundance of a favorite media theme: "Things morally are getting worse and worse. . . . Everything is terrible in America. We've lost our way."