I agree, I was just clarifying that it didn't even matter if it was ethical or not when it came to trying to link it to journalistic ethics, since it was never an issue of journalists acting ethically or not, when the publication decided to blacklist, it was the publication acting, thus not "journalism ethics" in the least.dirtysteve said:What the devs did wasn't unethical at all. It was a free choice. Why should Kotaku get special treatment, which is what access like that is. They don't have to give every mickey-mouse publication access, and that's only fair.runic knight said:It isn't even quite that it is shitty no matter who does it, Though admitedly, clickbait garbage is, it is merely that they seem to use that as part of explanation why they dislike kotaku gawker yet engage in it themselves. At that point it isn't about any sort of ethical requirement on their part, merely they are not consistent to me.
I made the distinction I did between business and journalism ethics simply because of what you put so well in your last paragraph there: namely, who is committing the "unethical" action. In this case it is the business, not the journalists, so right off the bat it can not really be an ethics in journalism concern. The actual ruling on the action being an ethical breach or not doesn't even matter much in regard to that I think.
I do sort of have to disagree a little though, this is newsworthy. Sadly for kotaku not as an ethical crusade to rally behind, but rather as a sign of the state of games journalism in general that it has reached a point where publishers not having a popular games news site in their favor is the exception, not the norm. In that regard, it is newsworthy of just how bad the status quo of the industry is. Kinda doubt that is a story the news itself would run though.
Personally, I wish all publications were severed in such a fashion and that the media and the publishers were distinctly separate entities and not so difficult to tell where the head of the one ended and the ass of the other began.