Reuters writer: "Gaming journalism" is a joke.

Burntvet

 

On occasion, I have posted about my dissatisfaction with the gaming press, at this site and at others, about the utter lack of anything resembling "real journalism".

The total absence of what are considered "journalistic ethics" and conflict of interest rules, for a long time have made me (and a good many others) disregard almost all of what the so called gaming press has to say. At this site and others like it.

It turns out, that "real journalists" share that opinion as well.

I submit the following for general consideration (it is from last year, but i just came by it):

 

 

 

http://bonglorio.tumblr.com/post/96244295610/i-work-for-reuters-im-a-journalist-in-the-media

“I work for Reuters. I’m a journalist in the media business.

Back in 2008, I sat in a conference and reviewed some proposals to integrate news sources focused on electronic gaming into our RSS service as niche content providers.

We considered IGN, Gamespot, and a few other syndicated online info feeds.

Now, in order to white label a source as affiliated with Reuters, you need to run through a checklist of ~100 items that are necessary for journalistic integrity. The source and its organization has to score at least a 60 out of 100 for it to be considered fair and unbiased.

These tests are carried out by senior journalists, editors, and investigators.

NONE of the gaming publications scored higher than a 15. For reference, the National Enquirer scored a 38 and the MSNBC blogosphere scored 44.

Some failures included:
- Economic ties with publishers
- Acceptance of favors
- 0% of staff held journalism degree
- Very small percentage worked in other major publications
- No real editing process
- No accountability

tl;dr: Gaming "journalism” is a joke and the laughingstock of reporting media. Continue to read these publications if you want, but assume that everything you read is biased or an outright lie.?"

For the record, none of this was a surprise to me in the least.
 

Edit: And scoring 60 out of ~100 does not strike me as being a particularly high standard of "integrity" either.

BeansnBread

Who wrote that?

kenpokiller

Journalism of journalism 

Journalismception

Burntvet

Originally posted by BeansnBread
Who wrote that?

Go to the link, the guy's tumblr feed info is there.

Rusque

No surprise here. It's not even just about ethics, it's their fundamental inability to parse information and present it to their readers/viewers.

Alumicard

The problem in my opinion with the whole gaming and also hardware media is that if you mention something bad in a review even if it might be the truth and your review could be called neutral then you won't get a preview version of the next game or hardware.

 

I just read about a case in which a hardware producer didn't send someone a preview model because that site mentioned some negative things about them in the past. They said that they got this reason from the PR department of the company so imho if they lied about it the company had sued them. Meaning that if you want to keep your job and report on the latest products you have to write something good or you need some form of compensation from the competition.

 

Which might be one reason why people are starting to wait for youtube or player reviews. They know that most of the sites are biased and they get money from one or the other company.

tawess

 

Well.... 

 

We kind of have to sepparate gaming juornalism (as in proffesional and educated actual journalists writing about games) from gaming "reporters" (uneducated, and by that i mena lacks a diploma in journalism and hobby writers / bloggers and such.) as this is a very different kind of cat. 

 

There are a decent amount game journalists but most we see today are writers or "reporters" that lack the proper education... For an example i would never go as far as to call my self a gaming jornalist even if i got a job writing in a proffesional capacity for a site / publication. i have a BA in cultural and media studies and a MA in media production... that does not make me a journalist. 

 

So the question then becomes... Should "big media" create a market for real journalists to work with gaming 

 

Originally posted by Alumicard

Which might be one reason why people are starting to wait for youtube or player reviews. They know that most of the sites are biased and they get money from one or the other company.

 

But that is just trading one un-vetted source for a even less reliable one... =P 

Four0Six

It is. "Gaming Journalism" is nothing better than advertisement.

 

But, to be fair, cable news is only in it for the ratings.

 

If we as gamers want to be looked at with unjudgemental eyes, we would do good to call for more, real, journalism.

Righteous_Rock

Don't you know that if you bite the hand that feeds you're not going to be fed? Watch streamers and journalists long enough and you will see most will never tell it like it is when a game is terrible. Those games will get sidestepped or in the case of journalism and popular streamers who are subsidiaries of large companies, the positive aspects will be highlighted. It's like this, the graphics sure are great and man those boss mechanics are something else, yet the game barely runs at 10 frames or the real big negative that gets swept under the carpet and that is cash shops, media and streamers act like paying for games or items in the cash shop is of no relevance. Nevermind that you will need to sell parts of your body to fully enjoy this game, and Nevermind the need to make business decisions while you immerse yourself, this game is grrrrreat, believe me folks, you're going to poop yourself.

tawess

EDIT: The comment i was replying to just questioned MMORPG.com in relation ads and stuff... 

well to be fair MMORPG have never afaik claimed to do games journalism..? They are a news site that posts opinions and editorial texts... Not the same thing. 

CrazKanuk

Originally posted by Burntvet

 

 

Edit: And scoring 60 out of ~100 does not strike me as being a particularly high standard of "integrity" either.

To be honest, it's so low because there isn't a lack of journalistic integrity these days, it's literally gone. Hey, at least Reuters has SOME level of standards, I suppose. That being said, I find it somewhat comical that a journalist is actually making any sort of comment about ethics in journalism when it's known to be a cut-throat, seedy, corrupt industry to begin with. Even for those who "pass" these tests, there are back-room deals being made, zero accountability, and horrible ethics. 

 

What validates you as a "journalist"? A college degree? Sorry, but the Internet changes everything. Sounds like sour grapes to me. "We write 'good' journalistic content and we get a little more than 3 million unique visitors per month. IGN writes fluff pieces and complete crap and they get 60+ Million unique visitors per month." *humph*!

 

Unfortunately, it seems like someone should probably hang up their fedora and accept that traditional journalism doesn't matter any more. By the time that you break ANY REAL story, it's already been trending on twitter for the past hour. My wife learned that Paul Walker died hours before it was on CNN, and I'd argue that CNN is pretty good at getting news out there quickly. I say that's unfortunate for a couple reasons. First, it means that I need to deal with horribly-written tripe that reeks of 8th-grade English. Secondly, it's just sad that this guy actually, literally, doesn't understand that Reuters' relevance isn't what it was 20 years ago. Yes, news agencies are now becoming irrelevant. 

Burntvet

Originally posted by CrazKanuk

Originally posted by Burntvet

 

 

Edit: And scoring 60 out of ~100 does not strike me as being a particularly high standard of "integrity" either.

To be honest, it's so low because there isn't a lack of journalistic integrity these days, it's literally gone. Hey, at least Reuters has SOME level of standards, I suppose. That being said, I find it somewhat comical that a journalist is actually making any sort of comment about ethics in journalism when it's known to be a cut-throat, seedy, corrupt industry to begin with. Even for those who "pass" these tests, there are back-room deals being made, zero accountability, and horrible ethics. 

 

What validates you as a "journalist"? A college degree? Sorry, but the Internet changes everything. Sounds like sour grapes to me. "We write 'good' journalistic content and we get a little more than 3 million unique visitors per month. IGN writes fluff pieces and complete crap and they get 60+ Million unique visitors per month." *humph*!

 

Unfortunately, it seems like someone should probably hang up their fedora and accept that traditional journalism doesn't matter any more. By the time that you break ANY REAL story, it's already been trending on twitter for the past hour. My wife learned that Paul Walker died hours before it was on CNN, and I'd argue that CNN is pretty good at getting news out there quickly. I say that's unfortunate for a couple reasons. First, it means that I need to deal with horribly-written tripe that reeks of 8th-grade English. Secondly, it's just sad that this guy actually, literally, doesn't understand that Reuters' relevance isn't what it was 20 years ago. Yes, news agencies are now becoming irrelevant. 

All of that may be true, but even on on questionable "real" news site, even disclaims any possible conflicts of interest and such.

Or most do anyway.

In the games press, none of that happens.

ButeoRegalis

What are you guys expecting? No on wants to pay for "game journalism", so folks like the MMORPG staffers have to find a different source of income. Advertisement.

While I think there is a huge, vast unexploited advertisement market here for pimple cream, Cheetos and Mountain Dew ads, most ads are game or gaming hardware related. That's a pretty tight income source stream controlled by few players. If you piss enough of them off by reviewing their stuff negatively, deserved or not, you write yourself right out of business.

I wonder if $1 from every visitor to the site in a month, $2 if you want to actively post on forums here, would 1) equal the revenue stream from advertisements right now, and 2) make 99% of the people leave leave for IGN, Gamespot, Gameobserver, etc, where they don't charge you.

CrazKanuk

Originally posted by Burntvet

Originally posted by CrazKanuk

Originally posted by Burntvet

 

 

Edit: And scoring 60 out of ~100 does not strike me as being a particularly high standard of "integrity" either.

To be honest, it's so low because there isn't a lack of journalistic integrity these days, it's literally gone. Hey, at least Reuters has SOME level of standards, I suppose. That being said, I find it somewhat comical that a journalist is actually making any sort of comment about ethics in journalism when it's known to be a cut-throat, seedy, corrupt industry to begin with. Even for those who "pass" these tests, there are back-room deals being made, zero accountability, and horrible ethics. 

 

What validates you as a "journalist"? A college degree? Sorry, but the Internet changes everything. Sounds like sour grapes to me. "We write 'good' journalistic content and we get a little more than 3 million unique visitors per month. IGN writes fluff pieces and complete crap and they get 60+ Million unique visitors per month." *humph*!

 

Unfortunately, it seems like someone should probably hang up their fedora and accept that traditional journalism doesn't matter any more. By the time that you break ANY REAL story, it's already been trending on twitter for the past hour. My wife learned that Paul Walker died hours before it was on CNN, and I'd argue that CNN is pretty good at getting news out there quickly. I say that's unfortunate for a couple reasons. First, it means that I need to deal with horribly-written tripe that reeks of 8th-grade English. Secondly, it's just sad that this guy actually, literally, doesn't understand that Reuters' relevance isn't what it was 20 years ago. Yes, news agencies are now becoming irrelevant. 

All of that may be true, but even on on questionable "real" news site, even disclaims any possible conflicts of interest and such.

Or most do anyway.

In the games press, none of that happens.

Sure, but it really just sounds like sour grapes. Plus, they never provide any legitimate source. They reference IGN and Gamespot and "some other sources" and then say that SOME of the items include "0% of staff having a journalism degree". Meanwhile it took me all of 5 minutes (ok, if I'm speaking literally, then maybe 10 minutes -TEN!!) to find someone on both IGN and Gamespot staff who have a degree in journalism. Soooooo, pretty much, yeah. Fail on the journalistic integrity rant for this dude. That's fine, though, I know that media companies struggle with misinformation these days. They must be busy telling everyone about how horrible all these bloggers and game journalists are, or dusting off their journalism degrees to actually go out and fact-check. 

 

BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT - Ok, to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, there WAS only two LARGE sites mentioned. So, I suppose if they were referencing one of my websites or some other one-man show, then they are probably right. However, I'll be if a subjective person were to go through the checklist on the companies doing these data feeds, I'll bet it would come out much higher. Waaaaaaay too much subjectivity to be "real". Especially coming from a company who publicises in their very own Standards and Values (in the Reuters Handbook of Journalism) that journalists will not inject their own opinion into the story. 

 

It's cool, though, I think we've all come to terms with the fact that journalistic integrity is something that went out the window with the fedora anyhow. 

Amana

This topic has been moved here because it is not about MMORPGs or anything within them. We frequently move threads that are off topic in The Pub to other forums. 

Arclan

LOLOL National Enquirer more than twice as credible as gaming press. And 0% of gaming press had journalism degrees. Nice.

/Edit we will still all come here and check out the pieces; but as always with a grain of salt and an eye of skepticism.

loulaki

Originally posted by Burntvet

Originally posted by BeansnBread
Who wrote that?

Go to the link, the guy's tumblr feed info is there.

 

and the article starts "back in 2008.."  i wouldn't call it legit..

 

but the fact that IGN and Kotaku seems closer to SUN rather theGuardian is true.

Cleffy

The fact the gaming industry buys reviews should be of no surprise. Any consumer review type publication implicitly has this. From Autos to Fashion, reviews are paid for by the manufacturers. The joke is expecting it to be different in gaming.

Now what is a joke is the current state of other forms of journalism. Seems a journalism degree now teaches you how to be a communist sympathizer. Its rare that such an industry has such a strong inclination towards giving the government power and being a mouth piece for propaganda.

Arclan

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Originally posted by Cleffy
The fact the gaming industry buys reviews should be of no surprise. Any consumer review type publication implicitly has this. From Autos to Fashion, reviews are paid for by the manufacturers. The joke is expecting it to be different in gaming.Now what is a joke is the current state of other forms of journalism. Seems a journalism degree now teaches you how to be a communist sympathizer. Its rare that such an industry has such a strong inclination towards giving the government power and being a mouth piece for propaganda.

---

Good points. I totally agree with your second paragraph even if it's a bit off topic.