I'm sorry, but that's a pretty lame excuse. "Oh but people will think we've been bought off no matter what we do!" If that's the case, then you should ignore those people and do what you think is right, and if you don't think it's right to report on such a damning issue, then I'm not sure we define that word by the same standards.Susan Arendt said:The fact that you assume the lack of comment is in the hopes of things going away renders any discussion pointless. I don't feel obligated to offer an opinion simply to "prove" my innocence. You look at the tools I need to do my job as a bribe - why should I bother saying anything at all? You've clearly already made your decision, and I can't prove a negative.
Either someone looks at the body of my work and believes I am who I say I am, or they don't. And very little I say about "Doritogate" will change that.
Here's a perfect example - our high praise of Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 "proved" that we'd been bought by EA. Our low score for Medal of Honor, then, should surely "prove" that to be untrue, right? Oh, no. It's just that EA doesn't care enough about that game to pay us off. It's not one of their "big" titles.
These are actual comments that come from these very forums.
So you perhaps see why I don't jump into the fray to get into a fight that isn't mine to begin with. Do I think a game journalist should be tweeting about a certain game in order to win a PS3? Of course not, that's clearly unprofessional - as was calling out that journalist by name in an article that wasn't about her, per se, but rather about the blurring line between PR and reporting. And until the audience starts from a default of giving us the benefit of the doubt, nothing anyone says about it matters. We are assumed to be liars, cheats, and thieves, no matter what we've done or said.
Most serious people don't think that reviewers actually are bought with shady backroom dealings, but they do know that they are given all sorts of benefits to eschew their opinion positively towards the game. That is literally what the PR people's job is. And they don't think reporters will deliberately write biased reviews to try and get more phat l00t in the future, but reporters can and do edge reviews based on past PR, even if subconsciously. And I'm sure most serious people don't think the Escapist's Dark Cabal convened and decided to slay all who would report on such a matter to attempt to hide their dark dealings with the dire producerbeasts, but the editorial decision that such a thing does not matter enough to warrant an article on the website is not a neutral decision - it's a very politically charged one, because the crux of what happened is not even 'journalists are doing this', but rather 'not only are journalists doing this but they don't even understand why some people might not find it business as usual'. Not reporting it is not a neutral editorial stance, it's a politised one that firmly agrees with the idea that there's nothing shady here at all.
(I had a great article on my browser history about how journalists believe they know where the 'sphere of consensus' on every given topic is - that is, the area between ideas that are so widely accepted dismissing them holds no water and ideas so fringe and ridiculous that only small disconnected groups take them seriously - and how when they get it wrong they unwittingly alienate large chunks of their audience. Can't find it though.)
It's actually a good thing that She Who Shall Not Be Named By Advice Of Our Legal Team stirred up this kind of ruckus, because it brought this whole thing to the forefront of public discussion, instead of just being another insightful article by Mr. Florence that disappears out of the public consciousness by the next week. The fact that even though the gaming press went silent I've seen this reported often by commenters shows this has left a mark. Kudos to Rydel & Carter, gentlemen and scholars, for being one of the few people to bring it up whose names actually are under 'writer'.