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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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God, that makes me intensely angry, because some of it is true, but only because kids are so heavily socialized to be that way. I don't have any children in my life, but the most cursory observation of those that friends and strangers have let me know that kids will play with and develop a preference for anything. It's only the policing of adults as individuals and as a society that makes them aware of what things are good toys, what things are bad toys, and what things aren't toys at all.

 

That whole section about aspirational play is total shit, though. What male gender role is being modeled when boys play with dinosaurs, eh?

 

If you want to get extra angry, go ahead and read the thread wherein they decide that the existence of trans* people proves that all gender identity is obviously purely biological.  That's where I checked out.

And in other news....for fuck's sake, one of the board members of the Society of Professional Journalists is going to host a live debate between the "sides" of Gamergate. He's had a whole series of posts about gg over the last week. Most recently, he announced the committee that will select the speakers...and the committee just happens to be all male.

 

I became really, super disenchanted with the SPJ a decade ago when they gave Judith Miller an award over the Scooter Libby fiasco, and refused to sanction or criticize her for her massive ethical failings (or even mention them).  I've found the intersections of the SPJ and ethics to be pretty laughable ever since.  I actually knew a member of the SPJ's ethics board at the time, who was essentially speechless when I asked him about the issues with giving her an award.  To be fair, it was in public when I asked him so I put him on the spot (because that's what journalists do sometimes), but still, no member of that committee ever addressed the level of hypocritical bullshit involved in that whole situation. 

 

Edited to add:  Just to clarify about the Judith Miller thing, you can read about the history of her completely fucking fabricated, working-in-hand-with-the-government Iraq War reporting.   And then you can read the closing paragraph of the announcement the SPJ sent out for her award:

 

The Society of Professional Journalists works to improve and protect journalism. SPJ is dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior. Founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, and based in Indianapolis, SPJ promotes the free flow of information vital to a well-informed public, works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists, and protects First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press.

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http://roninworksjapan.tumblr.com/post/118636752511/the-reason-why-we-leave-gamergate-part-1

 

I can't help but feel this guy probably was misguided and didn't really understand what he was getting into, what gg actually stands for. Or maybe I'm just hoping, because I feel bad for him being attacked for basically being Japanese.

Oof. I'm pretty good at engrish, but that article is rough reading, partially just because of the length.

 

BTW, he seems to have a sort of mission statement here, which give some context to the kind of industry self-censorship that he alludes to in his GG comments. While I'm not super up on the industry, I imagine there's a lot to object to in the way the anime industry selects projects.

 

http://roninworksjapan.tumblr.com/post/89698117731/who-are-we-and-our-goal

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 And in other news....for fuck's sake, one of the board members of the Society of Professional Journalists is going to host a live debate between the "sides" of Gamergate. He's had a whole series of posts about gg over the last week. Most recently, he announced the committee that will select the speakers...and the committee just happens to be all male.

 

The self-congratulatory smugness of that first post totally turned me off of reading the rest. He honestly seems to think that he's the first person of account to think about taking #GamerGate seriously and that there's hay to be made by giving the movement an opportunity to explain itself. As for the "ten good apples in a barrel of a thousand rotten ones" bit, which he uses to handwave the ubiquitous awfulness of #GamerGate, so what? If you're only willing to regard as "true" members of a movement those who elevate the discourse to a level that you find acceptable, what's the point of even discussing the movement at all, as opposed to those select individuals? I'm sure that, somewhere out there, there's probably one Neo-Nazi who's a genuinely nice person with considered but moderate ideas about white separatism, yet his existence couldn't possibly legitimize a group whose effect on the world has entirely been one of hatred and suffering.

 

 

EDIT: On second thought, I don't think I'm particularly surprised that someone from an organization of waning influence, due to changes in media and the economy, is excited that there are hundreds of people on the internet who are rabidly eager to stump for their organization, even if they have ulterior motives. It's still incredibly gross, though.

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And in other news....for fuck's sake, one of the board members of the Society of Professional Journalists is going to host a live debate between the "sides" of Gamergate. He's had a whole series of posts about gg over the last week. Most recently, he announced the committee that will select the speakers...and the committee just happens to be all male.

I became really, super disenchanted with the SPJ a decade ago when they gave Judith Miller an award over the Scooter Libby fiasco, and refused to sanction or criticize her for her massive ethical failings (or even mention them). I've found the intersections of the SPJ and ethics to be pretty laughable ever since. I actually knew a member of the SPJ's ethics board at the time, who was essentially speechless when I asked him about the issues with giving her an award. To be fair, it was in public when I asked him so I put him on the spot (because that's what journalists do sometimes), but still, no member of that committee ever addressed the level of hypocritical bullshit involved in that whole situation.

Edited to add: Just to clarify about the Judith Miller thing, you can read about the history of her completely fucking fabricated, working-in-hand-with-the-government Iraq War reporting. And then you can read the closing paragraph of the announcement the SPJ sent out for her award:

SPJ is only ever really used to tear people down anymore. Just about the only time I've seen them mentioned in the last few years has been weirdly angry people citing their code of ethics to criticize first Wikileaks and Manning, then Snowden and Greenwald. Does anyone actually take them seriously?

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SPJ is only ever really used to tear people down anymore. Just about the only time I've seen them mentioned in the last few years has been weirdly angry people citing their code of ethics to criticize first Wikileaks and Manning, then Snowden and Greenwald. Does anyone actually take them seriously?

 

My view of the SPJ is kind of weird and fractured.  I got my first job as a cub reporter in '94, and my editor was (and still is) a badass who had framed hate mail from Bob Dole hanging in his office (I still think getting hatemail from a sitting Senator is a goal to shoot for in life).  Initially, my view of the SPJ was informed a lot by him, a passionate and dedicated guy who pursued his craft with as much care and diligence as possible.  Fast forward a decade or so to when I finally finished my degree, and knew a bunch of professional journalists and a couple of high ranking members of the SPJ, and I learned just how cowardly it can be as an organization, with plenty of political infighting and maneuvering that neutered its ability to try and actually uphold the values it says it embodies.  I'm completely removed from all of that now though.  It's been since probably '06 since the last time I was paid to write anything, and every single reporter/editor I know has left the field to get paid more doing something else.  I can only assume that the SPJ has gotten worse in that time. 

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I'm familiar with their guidelines, but not what the actual institution gets up to beyond that (doesn't sound too great here). LIke most people writing about games, I'm a critic and do next to no reporting, which is just another facet that makes this entire "let's take their complaints seriously for a second" thing so ludicrous. The lack of actual journalism about games isn't an ethical issue, it's an economical issue. It's not like gamers are entitled to coverage that goes beyond enthusiast press (it would certainly be hard to make the argument that this area is of general interest or necessary for keeping citizens informed), especially not if they continue to refuse to pay for anything even remotely going in that direction.

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And in other news....for fuck's sake, one of the board members of the Society of Professional Journalists is going to host a live debate between the "sides" of Gamergate. He's had a whole series of posts about gg over the last week. Most recently, he announced the committee that will select the speakers...and the committee just happens to be all male.

 

The problems with the "committee" only start there. They have a Breitbart journalist, a self proclaimed failed game designer and a high school pupil who suspiciously sounds like an SJW conspiracy truther to me. They're putting five hours of their ranting about "being fair" online (that sounds like an Owen/Aurini thing to listen to. I certainly won't).

 

Anyway, brilliant stuff in the comments regarding the all male thing. Just crazy brilliant.

 

A little note on: “sadly the gender worked out that way”

Hey, we are here to deal with corruption in journalism, not tokenism in identity politics.

If anything, women in GG already had a lot of public podium:

– Jennie Bharaj spoke to Huffpost livestream

– Mercedes spoke to Pakman Show (twice)

– Lizzy now works at the Escapist

– Sommers weighed in on GG on a few media and Pakman show

The males in GG haven’t been heard at all so far, with the exception of a minor appearance on Pakman by Sargon.

 

Come to think of it, maybe "sadly the gender worked out that way" should be gamergate's motto.

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The males in GG haven’t been heard at all so far, with the exception of a minor appearance on Pakman by Sargon.

 

Are you fucking kidding me? This is a thing someone actually said?!

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The males in GG haven’t been heard at all so far, with the exception of a minor appearance on Pakman by Sargon.

 

Yeah, except for every other instance of #GamerGate that's not a formalized interview by a certain segment of media outlets. Also, if they claim that women have figured so prominently in the promotion and dissemination of #GamerGate, to the exclusion of men, isn't building the committee entirely out of voices from the supposedly unheard male perspective exactly what "tokenism" means?

 

ITALICS ARE TAKING OVER MY LIFE.

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The more I read into this, the more I'm reminded of fascist propaganda trials. :blink:
 
What proper journalist would actually subject him/herself to THIS?
 
 
/edit: A propos

!
 
I've written about FemFreq's new video elsewhere yesterday and was happy to not to mention gamergate at all. However, seeing this attempt at... ah, heck, let's call it interpretation for the sake of hyperbole...
 
6ff9ee10a4f9edae540bfe250b899ddf_jadeisg
 

 

Hah! Let's take a look at this.

 

Beyond Good & Evil opposes hate infusing state propaganda, but heralds journalism – in particular, the journalism of a handful of professionals who are just struggling to make a living. These journalists publish anonymously, as they are in perpetual fear of being attacked – by people who are attempting to control citizens by lying about fighting in a war that does not exist, against an enemy they themselves have created. Only the innocent are ever attacked. Particularly interesting here is that the forces who vow to defend this world, who have in fact declared themselves the only protectors without anyone asking them to, are in reality destroying it swiftly under false pretenses. Journalists who would dare to portray the false protectors in a negative light, who dare to question their motives, are ostracised as corrupt, as part of the fictional enemy conspiracy.

 

Jade, the game's hero, is 'reporting' on something way beyond the political sphere. She's into animal photography! Only when the life of her loved ones is threatened, only when it's clear that social justice is an absolute must, does she report on issues of culture and society. 

 

Sounds like something you've experienced recently? :)

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It really sucks that she didn't ask permission until after it was so big you'd look bad if you said no, but isn't saying she's pedestalling them a bit much?

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I honestly don't know.

 

It is, however, palpable that she was getting picked on from within the community and because that community is too busy sharpening their swords for the next gamergate scenario some people are getting lionised in a way that is problematic.

 

But then everything is problematic as mentioned in that Mcgilldaily blog.

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I don't think she means to say that she's idolizing them in her personal life, best intentions and all that, but to go from "I think these women are inspiring" to crowdfunding making a bunch of inspirational drawings of them fits the bill pretty accurately.

 

I also heard from folk that apparently she only asked people if it was okay to draw them without any mention of her plans beyond that, and others seem to have not been asked one way or the other.

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I think it's problematic for a number of reasons, including the ones you guys mention. The one that gets me is that it kinda equalizes the importance/impact of all those people and there are definitely some women there that have done some major, transformational stuff that will create real change and there are others who are more or less just aGG who retweet Storify-s and call out Nero/Slade Villena/etc regularly. It would be fine if it was a personal work of art that she posted on imgur and it got reshared like crazy, but by making this a Kickstarter it instills some (deserved or not) legitimacy and public voice that it wouldn't have otherwise.

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I personally didn't like it from the start, well before it was a Kickstarter because I didn't like the idea of feminism and harassment being reactionary or a game. I had a talk with Kiva herself about how a trauma card was completely terrible as a "strength" card from a personal and mechanical standpoint and while she's gone away from the game idea, I don't get what a deck of collecting cards is really for. I don't like the idea of feminists being turned into a collectible deck like superheroes. It was a cute project when she was cheering people up but now that it's a kickstarter and has money attached to it, she's not gotten a lot of good counsel on how to actually treat people legally fair. There's been very few consent forms, very few permissions given from these lists of people who are now, by dint of it being used as "get back at GG" fodder, are back into the line of fire. 

 

All around, I think it's a pretty nonsensical project that has a lot of problems. I don't think the artist is a bad person but this is a pretty terrible project. 

 

Flipside of this is I also don't like Anna Anthropy for personal reasons and first half of that blog post is putting an unrelated woman's head on a spike in order to effectively...shit on Kiva's project in the second half. Hence why I haven't relinked that post at all. 

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I'm familiar with their guidelines, but not what the actual institution gets up to beyond that (doesn't sound too great here).

 

Something I should say is that there are really good individuals who are, or at least were, in the SPJ.  Even the guy I called out about the Judith Miller stuff is someone who I otherwise have an incredible amount of respect for.  He was an investigative reporter who did some important work in the 80s and 90s, and he taught me as much as anyone about how to approach a long form investigative piece. 

 

The problem is that as an organization I think they have ended up taking very passive, and ultimately cowardly, stances.  Bravery by committee is just not something that happens very often.  Even with gamergate, the organization didn't want to address it, at all.  You've got a mob who has at times used your own guidelines as a weapon to attack other journalists, and you do nothing.  Probably in part because few or no games journalists are members of the SPJ.   And many of them are bloggers, and the SPJ and a lot of the old school professionals have really struggled to come to terms with what the Internet has done to reporting and writing.  And now one of the board members is engaging in what looks to be like an increasingly misguided attempt to intervene, and no one else in the organization is saying or doing anything. 

 

If I have the time this weekend, I may go digging through some of the places that cover the SPJ to see if there are any interesting reactions to this though.  There was a lot of dissent about the Miller fiasco, it just didn't make it to the actual conference or presentation of the award.  There may be something similar going on with Gamergate, and I'd be curious to see if there are some interesting reactions to this.

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According to Brianna Wu, Denis Dyack is screencapping private email conversations with other people in the industry and submitting them to Gamergate.

 

Wtf?

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Not really surprised that he'd do something like that. He's infamous for posting some tirade and getting banned from GAF of all places.

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I didn't realize that Dyack has been on board with gg since day one.  He started the gg thread in his own forums, and was routinely chipping in, at least for awhile.  I only scanned the first few pages, but he shared multiple of the crazy links/videos from the worst of gg, and then had this to say about Sarkeesian:

 

 I also think Sarkeesian has done more harm then good. Here is an interesting video to watch:

 

He then goes on to post a couple of the BUSTED and DESTROYED rebuttal videos.  And then he blames the gaming press for the failure of his kickstarter. 

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It isn't surprising as much as it is me shouting "WHYYYYYYY" at my computer screen and wishing that Dyack would just fully sink into total and complete irrelevance.

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When I saw the name "Dennis Dyack" on this page I had it confused in my head with "Derek Smart", although I quickly realised that functionally speaking, they're pretty much interchangeable.

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