Wired’s gaming blog brought up a NPR report about the Halo book, where the reporter essentially trashed gamers and insulted their intelligence with back-handed comments. Sadly, this isn’t an exception to the media rule; gamers are treated as weird because, generally, the people that are making the mainstream news don’t play games.
When I got my Omeganaut news last year, I was at work at a local tv outlet owned by a giant megacorp. I was essentially laughed at by some coworkers for my excitement, and, no, I kept myself pretty restrained until I could go to the parking lot and actually freak out. Later, I had to explain to a couple employees what modern video games were like, and deal with back-handed remarks of “Well, I don’t let my child play those because I don’t want them to be socially inept.”
This is not an anecdote of the trials of being a geek in a non-geek world, because we all know that one. Instead, this is meant to show that those that report the news, especially on the local level, are not of the gaming demographic, and sometimes have no desire to understand that gaming demographic. I even live in the tech-savvy town of Austin, which hosts plenty of developers and publishers; I’m sure it’s worse for other places. They let negative examples influence their opinions, never trying to do any deeper digging. These are the people reporting the news! That’s their jobs!
My geek soapbox aside, what Joffe-Walt did is poor journalism, no matter what she was reporting on. She didn’t have what is sometimes called “fingertips” on the issue: basic knowledge that could lead to asking good questions and creating a strong piece. Instead, she chose to let bias form her story and her questioning, something that should be a lesson to any reporter.
