What Barta did, through some combination of malice and sheer stupidity, is to draw a ton of attention to something for which the facts aren't known. He's elevated what might be an isolated issue into the appearance of an institutional failure and hindered the ability of Pollard and his staff to investigate this because now media relations adds another layer of complexity.
Going public in the way he did immediately politicizes the issue. Not in the electoral politics sense, but that it's going to split people into opposing camps who will believe whatever makes their side look good or the other side look bad. That generally isn't conducive to an unbiased arrival at the truth.
This isn't to say that this should never become public. But were Barta operating in good faith, he could have waited until the investigation was complete. Or he could have issued a joint statement with Pollard. Either option would have given Barta more credibility given his own sketchy history. But he wanted the "gotcha."
It can't be repeated enough: Barta was in such a rush to embarrass ISU that he couldn't even be bothered to spell his own job title correctly.
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