Jarlaxl said:
1. It's the job of a gaming news website to report gaming news. This is gaming news. Ergo, it is reported. You don't pass up on things it is possible your readership will find interesting, even if it might cause "controversy." Should the news not report things like the lives of politicians because it might be controversial?
2. When your business model revolves around page rules, you're damn right they'll post news stories that will garner page hits. It reminds me of a line I heard many moons ago: "WOW! A BUSINESS ABOUT MAKING MONEY!!! It blew my mind! I mean, I know Donald Trump got into business to make friends..."
This isn't gaming news. It's some random moron with a video editor who made a fake trailer so he could get some views on his youtube account. You know what this article has done? Fed into that moron's desires. Great job. Instead of just letting the moronic little prank die in obscurity, they give it views. There is literally NOTHING news worthy on this. The only reason to report on this is to exploit the controversy for cheap views. Nothing more... nothing less. It's nothing new on this website: the overall quality of the journalism on this site ranges from several questionable to barely passing.
Even further, most evidence suggests this ISN'T EVEN A GAME. You said that gaming news websites report on gaming news. If this isn't a game, then why are they even reporting on this?
The simple fact is that The Escapist is exploiting the same controversy they are referring to in the article for their own game: to get page viewed. It's underhanded and totally lacks of journalistic integrity. Instead of reporting on something important, non-trivial, and REAL, they instead just exploit some controversy for easy page views... real classy.
Stop white knighting poor journalism, would you? The author could have let this stupid video die in obscurity to be forgotten by the internet, but instead decided to exploit someone's silly little prank for views.