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Thursday, February 23, 2006

More Mainstream FUD

Spong points out that ABC News willfully ignored information from GamerDad in writing their "Pictochat will steal your child and sell it to the black market" story. Anyone surprised? It's not like they've ever done any fact-checking with anything Jack Thompson ever lied about, or tried to offer a fair and unbalanced story on this. Scare pieces don't sell well that way. If it bleeds, it leads ... and if it might make you scream ... it um, goes on page two.

And the "Overblown 25 to Life Story Of The Day" award goes to WAVE 3 in Kentucky, which announces that the game allows that "teens 17 and older can legally act out Rebecca's real-life nightmare" ... that being of her police officer husband being shot and killed by a teenager, who then turned the gun on themselves.

Just stop, news-type people, with trying to place grieving widows and brothers as unbiased opinions on games in society. It's like killing a puppy in a movie, you can't win on logic so you'll just pull out something heavy and emotional. Real nice. This piece ends with a link to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fun.

Any responsible piece of journalism would have provided something a little more useful to the reader .... like a damn review of the game.




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2 comments:

Winkyboy said...

From WAVE3: "The game is rated "M" for "Mature" -- which means it's meant for players over the age of 17. However, many teens younger than 17 can get parents or friends to buy mature titles for them."

I translate this as saying, "It's rated for adults only, but no one cares." Further, in that statement they are saying that there should be no game made "for adults only".

Frustrating.

Josh said...

The only way the article could have been worse is by having the reporter just outright admit their personal disgust.