Column: The Contingency Plan

There's no way to pull a bullet back once the trigger's been squeezed.

Now a sex scandal has been fired at the University of Cincinnati and there's no way to stop it from doing considerable damage. Longtime Bearcats can only hang their heads in shame.

Here we go again.

The story, first broken by The Cincinnati Enquirer, was quickly followed up by a thorough and detailed report by The News Record. Containing all the key elements that sell papers: sex (young athletes is a plus), alcohol and a dash of sports.

As tempting as it is to jump all over the tabloid plot, here's the official warning to everyone: Tread lightly with this one. There are a lot of players and a lot of repercussions.

"Too often the media can be used, precisely in a situation like this, where an allegation is made that is not true," Jon Hughes, head of the journalism department at UC, said.

False allegations getting out and leading to a media frenzy that brings considerable damage to a university?

What? That sort of thing never happens.

Unless, of course, you count small incidents like the scandal involving the Duke lacrosse team. The media got excited with a hot story and an overzealous prosecutor grabbed for a piece of the action. Multiple players were accused of rape (and given the stigma that goes with the territory), a coach was wrongfully pushed out of his job and a mockery was made of our legal system when it turned out to be a load of crap. The feeding frenzy of the mass media is as guilty as anyone in the harm caused by that story.

Maybe we can learn from their mistakes.

Not to say that the letter packed with harmful allegations is full of lies, because even though the story is already splattered across the front page we still don't know what's true. It's just my intuition to question charged letters shot off from anonymous sources.

Christopher Martin, associate professor of journalism at Miami [Ohio] University, said he thinks The Enquirer especially has done a good job with the limited information they have.

But he also harkens back to the Duke University incident as a "cautionary tale."

"The Enquirer should not get into the business of naming any students who are allegedly involved because it smears them before we know the truth of the matter," Martin said.

But more importantly than the good job that's been done with the story so far, Martin is concerned with the future.

"Blowing this up into a big story could sell a lot of newspapers for them, but it would be exploitative and poorly serve the purpose of journalism," Martin said.

The series of sexposés would indeed sell a lot of papers, but it might sink the university … even if the allegations end up being slightly less than true.

Bad news for UC students, your diploma was just stained again.

Even if you have nothing to do with sports, athletics are the most prolific part of most universities and whatever reputation they build, spreads across the board.

Depending on where the media goes from here - either taking the route of selling papers, or the high road of serving as a watchdog of internal UC procedures - it could get better or it could get worse.

Much worse.

Any thoughts or questions about sex tapes?Have a sex tape? E-mail Andrew Warner at andrewwarner2@gmail.com