...Does this kid know what journalism is? Yes the New York Times is not about to launch an investigation into President Obama's birth certificate. But they didn't exactly ignore that issue either. While it was rarely front-page news except on slow news days, the topic was certainly covered. And while they never investigated the certificate, they certainly investigated the issue and there were articles that detailed the points of view of each side, interviews with major figures in each side, and a basic overview of the point of view of each side. Good journalism means that you know that the whole birth certificate thing is bullshit. But it also means knowing that there is a faction of people out there willing to risk quite a lot on the chance that it's not bullshit.
Ultimately, journalism boils down to Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. If you can accomplish all of those, than you have at the very least halfway decent journalistic integrity. Take the birth certificate issue. Who? President Obama, his family, and a sizable faction of people claiming his documents are falsified, most from the political far right. What? A movement of people upset at the results of the latest US presidential election, who believe that the new President is in fact ineligible to hold that position, on the grounds of the documents stating his place of birth being falsified. When? 2008 - present. Where? The United States of America, mostly Hawaii, the President's birth state. Why? A variety of reasons, and this is one of two places where covering the issue with full truthful representation actually requires investigation. There are a variety of reasons why the "birthers" claim what they do. Some will straight up admit they are looking for anything to get the President impeached. Some well and truly believe that the President cannot possibly be an American, and that the documents of his birth are falsified. Some are participating purely for the attention, while others seek to gain political clout among the voters the group represents, which can actually be significant given the way the American Primary System works. For a Republican candidate, it can be especially prudent to associate yourself with a group like the birthers in order to generate a larger groundswell of support from the part of your party most likely to vote, which is statistically more likely to be the extreme groups than any other group. How? This is the other part your journalistic investigation goes into. Birthers have tried everything from bribery to court orders to try to dig up information. But that's a much more elaborate topic, and finding a politician heavily invested in the shadier side of this could be a story in and of itself.
Now consider how these apply to GamerGate: Who? A bunch of people on the internet, whose stated goal is to improve the journalistic quality of games reporting. What? A large scale movement carried out mostly on social media and internet forums, with very little real-world presence. When? Over the last few months. Where? Truthfully, internationally. Why? This is again the best place to begin to dig. As said above, the stated reason is to improve the quality of games journalism. And on the surface that story checks out, after all, there are no games sites that can truly claim to be "games journalism sites", because very few of their "journalists" actually hold journalistic degrees. Reuters, an international news agency watchdog, reported that although it reviewed several high and low profile gaming news sites, not one qualified for syndication, with the highest scorer achieving a 15 of 100 on a journalistic integrity test. Yet, other motivations clearly exist in the GamerGate movement, and as a journalist, it is your job to investigate and dissect all of these motives. And to do that, you have to cover the people who actually have something important to say, and you have to cover the shitheads. The New York Times does not shy away from this. Everyone from Mahatma Gandhi to Aldof Hitler has been quoted in the New York Times. Karl Marx used to be a NYT correspondent. If you're going to report the news, you are not doing your job unless you report every aspect of it. BBC has interviewed terrorists. CNN regularly interviews people charged with capital crimes after the arrest. None of this diminishes their journalistic integrity, nor does it legitimize the points of view of the persons interviewed.
The very principle at the core of journalism is that every issue, no matter how ridiculous, has more than one face. And to be fair and balanced you have to cover all of them, no matter how crazy or offensive any of those sides may seem. Your job is not to legitimize them, and if you're doing your job correctly, you won't - a true journalist collects and states facts, nothing more. It does not matter how wrong a point may seem - as a journalist your duty is to cover it. They never report a war and not report both sides. Hell, CNN is horribly biased and they were the first cable news network to actually cover both sides of a war publicly; specifically the Gulf war. CNN covered the American side of the war, why the US forces were engaging, and at the same time, they were getting their interview with Saddam Hussein - They reported live through American bombings and reported the damage American bombers were doing to Iraqi citizens. That was a perspective of war that had rarely been covered before. And there are many who would view it as the wrong perspective - after all, Hussein was a dictator and a terrorist. But as a journalist you still have a duty to cover it.
But really, though, the one thing that has me more ticked off than anything:
Why would you subscribe to The Escapist, or really any gaming news site, if you are looking for journalistic integrity? The industry parties are widely known facts now; The number of adds on the site should be more than enough of a giveaway; There's nothing on the site to indicate any sort of syndication by a journalistic watchdog like Reuters; and I don't think I've seen anywhere anything saying the writers for The Escapist have degrees in journalism.
You people complain that you want more journalistic integrity in your games news, yet your wallets say things are fine the way they are. Way to go, gamers.
