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Fox Business Draft v0.4

a guest Oct 21st, 2014 261 Never
  1. Subject: Attention for Potential Fox Business Story Regarding Gaming and Left-Leaning Media Coverage and Corruption
  2.  
  3.  
  4. Dear Fox Business,
  5.  
  6. Over the past 2 months, a consumer revolt and boycott has been growing within the video game industry and press, and industry that is estimated to be worth $100 billion annually by 2017 [1].
  7.  
  8. In August, evidence leaked that a game developer received favorable coverage while engaging in relationships within the gaming press [2].  Gamers investigated and found that the journalists at Kotaku (Gawker entity) neither disclosed any personal relationships in their writings nor in their reviews.  As gamers attempted to discuss the issue of gaming press ethics, nepotism, corruption, and collusion, websites across the internet censored all discussion, including Reddit (Conde Naste entity), Kotaku (Gawker entity), NeoGAF, and 4chan.  Youtubers attempted to create videos to discuss the growing story, only to have their videos taken down due to malicious DMCA notices which were protected under Fair Use provisions.  Upon mass-censorship, the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate was creator actor Adam Baldwin [3].
  9.  
  10. Rather than addressing corruption within the gaming press, large video game outlets decried gamers as misogynists.  Further evidence reveals many conflicts of interest at sites Kotaku (Gawker entity) and Polygon (Vox entity) [4].  Subsequently, more than 11 articles were written within a 48-hour period proclaiming in unison, “Gamers are Dead” [5], while simultaneously misrepresenting the gaming community as composed of straight white male misogynists.  This massive multi-pronged hit-piece suggested a coordinated behind-the-scenes attempt to control the narrative, leading many to believe that there existed a private mailing list similar to JournoList [6] but focused on gaming press.  It was soon revealed that such a list did exist, a private Google mailing list called GameJournoPros [7]
  11.  
  12. Gamers became rightfully enraged and immediately demanded reform in the gaming press, ideally adopting policies along the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics [8].  Several sites, notably among them such as The Escapist (A Defy Media entity), instituted an ethics policy and allowed #GamerGate conversations on their forums [9] to occur.  Other gaming sites such as Kotaku (Gawker entity), Polygon (Vox entity), The Verge (Vox entity), Ars Technica (Conde Naste entity), and many others proceeded to smear and slander their gaming audience, all while deleting dissenting comments from articles.  This served to only further antagonize and vilify gamers who increased their boycott efforts in response.  Gamers contacted advertisers on the pro-slander and pro-censorship websites, alerting companies to the mistreatment and misrepresentation of their consumers.  One of the largest advertisers to pull support from Gamasutra was Intel [10], much to the delight of #GamerGate.
  13.  
  14. In the course of over 2 months, #GamerGate has continued to grow, all while gaming journalists continued to write hit-piece after hit-piece.  Media outlets outside of the gaming press have taken note, though the response has been interesting.  Many left-leaning outlets have utilized lazy research to contribute to a narrative of #GamerGate being about harassing women out of the gaming and technology industries.  However, libertarian and business-oriented media have found this narrative of “GamerGate is a harassment campaign” to be simply unfounded.  Yes, there are online trolls attempting to hijack the story for their disgusting amusement (many suspect a third party such as SomethingAwful goons, or Weird Twitter, to be the source of trolling).
  15.  
  16. However, this unfair portrayal of the #GamerGate movement has only deepened the resolve of gamers, with the #GamerGate hashtag now reaching over 1.5 million tweets with an average of 90-100k tweets over the last few days.  It seems #GamerGate will not stop until those who wrote these hit-pieces address the factually incorrect narrative that they have attempted to paint.  Gamers are a particularly goal-oriented group and are accustomed to grinding for hours, days, and months just for the smallest of achievements in video games.
  17.  
  18. The sad fact is that the gaming press has created its own demise by,
  19.  
  20. * Refusing to address inaccurate articles and adopt an ethics policy
  21. * Grossly misrepresenting gamers as misogynists and harassers in order to deflect attention away from their own ethical issues
  22. * Attributing all harassment and doxxing to #GamerGate rather than a few, select online trolls
  23. * Signaling to those outside of the gaming industry that it is hostile to all female developers
  24. * Utilizing a private mailing list of competing press outlets to control narratives, blacklist game journalists, and instill a chilling effect with respect to dissent to the narrative.
  25.  
  26. All gamers have wanted is for game journalists to disclose if they are financing or in a relationship with those that they cover in articles and reviews.  Rather than adopt these simple changes, the gaming press has apparently chosen to double-down on these tactics (by declaring also,"#GamerGate is dead.") in the vain hope that #GamerGate will capitulate before their remaining advertisers abscond.
  27.  
  28. In my opinion, this is a terrible business decision on their part.  Not only are gaming press outlets losing advertising revenue left and right, they are also creating a false climate of fear for women within the games and tech industry, which will only further harm companies that attempt to diversify their technical staff to be more inclusive of women.
  29.  
  30. I believe this is a good story for Fox Business to research and do a piece on as it highlights some very key points that are advantageous to Fox Business,
  31.  
  32. * Slandering and misrepresenting your audience is not an intelligent business tactic
  33. * Just like JournoList, left-leaning game journalists were caught red-handed attempting to craft narratives through the private GameJournoPros mailing list
  34. * #GamerGaters have been labelled a right-wing reactionary movement despite the overwhelming evidence they are left leaning [11], showcasing that the left-leaning media is too far left for liberals
  35. * Creating a moral panic within the gaming and tech industry only serves to shrink the market, talent pool, and accelerate a potential video game crash
  36.  
  37. For a quick recap and summary, I recommend the following articles and videos,
  38.  
  39. * "GamerGate in 60 Seconds" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipcWm4B3EU4
  40. * http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/12/gamergate-part-i-sex-lies-and-gender-gam
  41. * http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/
  42. * http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/10/06/its-time-for-video-game-journalists-to-engage-with-gamergate/
  43. * http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/10/09/gamergate-is-not-a-hate-group-its-a-consumer-movement/
  44.  
  45. Below are sources.  I encourage you to contact Adam Baldwin, Erik Kain (video game journalist), Alexander Marcis (of The Escapist) for further information.
  46.  
  47. Thank you for your time,
  48. xxx
  49.  
  50. Sources
  51.  
  52. [1] http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/14/mobile-gaming-could-drive-entire-game-industry-to-100b-in-revenue-by-2017/
  53. [2] http://thezoepost.wordpress.com/
  54. [3] https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin/status/504801169638567936
  55. [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2ejs7v/gaming_journalists_patricia_hernandez_of_kotaku/
  56. [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
  57. [6] http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/08/games-journalism-is-broken-and-needs-to-die-heres-how-we-kill-it/
  58. [7] http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/17/Exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite
  59. [8] http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
  60. [9] http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/12223-The-Escapist-Publisher-Issues-Public-Statement-on-Gamergate
  61. [10] http://www.gamepolitics.com/2014/10/14/intel-pulls-ad-campaign-gamasutra
  62. [11] http://cirsova.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/thoughts-on-the-political-leanings-of-gamergate/
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