I’m a really irritating
person.
I irritate myself.
I’ve probably irritated
you.
For most of the world
particularly journalists and sometime academics there seems to be a universal
get out of jail free memo that I did not get. The memo seems to say:
I think the memo also gives
some examples.
1/ If you are writing about Second Life feel free to say it has well over 10 million subscribers, don’t bother thinking about what ‘Residents’ means or looking extensive debate about it.
2/ Feel free to say World of Warcraft is the biggest online video game in the world. Ignore anything from Asia or anything Asians play – we are working hard on ignoring them so you’d kinda be helping.
I find the number of
academic papers that I peer review and have to correct simply things like this
in to be frankly disturbing.
Now I want to talk about
the UK national news paper The Daily Telegraph but before that, let’s talk
about PBS.
PBS (a public service
broadcaster based in the US) has an online site and (I believe) series of
programs titled Digital Nation or ‘digital_nation’ when they are feeling all
internety’ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/).
I’m given to understand
that in the US media landscape PBS is a name you can trust. So good, this is
going to be all fact all the way then,,,
I started to read the
Digital Nation site. I saw good stuff from the people that you would expect to
be talking about these matters, Jenkins, Gee etc. Then I started to stumble. First
off was the feature video on ‘Internet Addiction’ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/virtual-worlds/internet-addiction/a-self-confessed-addict.html?play).
"Jeesoo Park & Devin Dwyer sat down with Adam Brown, who says World of Warcraft took over his life for 10 years. In a special collaboration, Columbia School of Journalism students are contributing short video reports to Digital Nation"
Spotted it?
Yup. Not only did the
person not say anything in the video about playing WoW for 10 years, WoW of
course has not been around for 10 years. Now this was a student work. But as I snarkly
commented I guess Columbia School of Journalism does not teach fact checking.
Neither does PBS editorial it seems. Following my comment the summary has now
been changed. What is shocking here is the staggering falseness of the
statements – you don’t have to be a WoW expert to know that it’s not been
around for 10 years. It’s really easy to find out the launch date.
This got me interested in
what the site was saying about WoW. Next I came across a post by Rachel Dretzin the Producer /
Director of the series (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/us/#dretzin).
So someone who you might think would have a clue and would not be up for
misrepresenting things. ‘Friad not
Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/online/open/
“Google Guilt
[…]
But when David decided to do a bit of snooping around his son's computer, he discovered that his son's profile in the online game World of Warcraft included a link to a hardcore porn Web site, among other things.”
So let me get this straight
PBS are saying that there are links to hardcore porn in WoW. In WoW profiles in
fact.
Anyone know what a WoW
profile is?
Ever found hardcore porn in
WoW?
Here we are not just talking factlessness about WoW, we have misrepresentation - let’s look at what ‘David’ actually says (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/online/open/2008/05/welcome.html)
“[…] I "Googled" my son's World of WarCraft nickname.
Directly, I was taken to his gaming profile page and it looked as I had seen it many times on his computer. Then, I noticed that there was a listing for "his" website. I clicked on the link and it took me to the most hard core porn site I had ever seen
[…],
As I reviewed his WOW profile site more closely ".
So, actually:
- David did not say he snooped
around his son’s computer, he googled his character name.
- He did not find porn
links in WoW he found them on a gamer profile site.
He does conflate things a
little, but David is a civilian here – Ms Dretzin is a PBS producer – one that
is in my view misrepresenting David and WoW and indeed WoW and VW’s in general.
But it’s a game – why
bother fact checking or researching eh?
And so to The Daily
Telegraph
"Average age of adult computer
game addicts is 35, US study shows"
You will not find the
content at the end of the link. It has been removed as a result of my complaint
to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission. But you will find lots of links to it.
What’s wrong with the
headline?
The story is ostensibly
about Weaver III et al, 2009, ‘Health-Risk Correlates of Video-Game Playing
Among Adults’ American Journal of Preventive Medicine (see this link for press
release and original paper:
http://www.ajpm-online.net/content/pressreleases#2009).
This Weaver paper does not say
anything about:
- average age of gamers
- average age of adult
gamers
- average age of addicts
Now admittedly both Weaver
and the press release about it requires a little close reading. The press
release actually says:
“While video gaming is generally perceived as a pastime for children and young adults, research shows that the average age of players in the United States is 35.”
But the ‘research’ the
press release is talking about here is not the Weaver, it’s Reference 3 of that
paper: ESA Essential facts 2008 (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2008.pdf).
That is, the 35 number is
not part of the research the press release is about and the Telegraph story is about. It's just a background and it’s about gamers in the US not adults or addicts or
adult addicts.
The Daily Telegraph piece
takes it further though. The Weaver paper is not about addiction per se any use
of the word is a reference to other research – so there was no finding about
addicts or their age.
These are just examples.
Ones I wanted to go through in a little detail just to demonstrate how
prevalent the lack of fact checking around games is, how blatant and how simple
many of the facts are to check.
On a side note I urge those
that enjoy a good (well terrible) media effects paper to read the Weaver one.
Masochists will also be interested in the companion piece ‘Video Games – Play
or “Playlike” Activity’ which argues that playing a Video Game is not really
play.
Lastly I want to make a
point about journalism, corrections and internet practice.
In the UK we have
the Press Complaints Commission you write to them when the press mess up – due to my complaint the Daily Telegraph
article has been removed. But that’s not what I asked for. I asked for it to be
corrected under the same URL. In that way when one clicks on one of the
multiple links to the piece one will not find a 404 but the corrected text. A
404 can simply be a system error and does not indicate that the piece was
withdrawn – so the error lives on the net. It’s been suggested that a new
correction is published but again I have said no as the 404 will remain and
unless you know the sotry is false you will not find the correction.
Thus I feel that there
should be a broad online standard for error corrections where:
- the original URL is used
- the original text is also
available with an indication of the error
See.
I told you I was irritating.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Shaw
Good job on being irritating, keep up the good work!
Posted by: Stabs | Sep 16, 2009 at 08:03
Well said! Irritating, perhaps, but highly necessary.
(On a loosely related topic, Ben Goldacre's blog Bad Science is dedicated to the misreporting of science in the media.)
Posted by: Steve Melnikoff | Sep 16, 2009 at 08:27
Link for my previous comment:
Bad Science
Posted by: Steve Melnikoff | Sep 16, 2009 at 08:27
Steve - yeh I sent Ben an email about it too. Following the 'rape' reporting the Telegraph seem to have form when it comes to their reporting / use of science to back a political position.
Posted by: Ren Reynolds | Sep 16, 2009 at 08:32
This just in from the PCC - correction is now up under the original URL so anyone that links to the story should find the correction instead: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/6041337/Average-age-of-adult-computer-game-addicts-is-35-US-study-show.html
Posted by: Ren Reynolds | Sep 16, 2009 at 09:19
I am a journalist. I do not write about video games. And you are not irritating. This is very well analysed and even better argumented. *hat tip*
Posted by: Tonj | Sep 16, 2009 at 09:47
Hey Ren
I don't think you are irritating I think you're behind the curve. When you realise that undertaking this excercise for every single report, conference paper, newspaper, blog posts, magazine article and journal article then essentially you create infinite work and you totally give up.
Also, these errors aren't restricted to video games you find them in mass media coverage of almost every field COS PEOPLE ARE FICK AND NEED IT ALL BREAKING DOWN INTO SIMPLE TALK.
Also, we can't expect English graduates to know everything about everything.
Posted by: Cunzy1 1 | Sep 16, 2009 at 09:54
What Cunzy said. The more you know about a field, the less likely you'll be happy with mainstream media coverage of it.
Growing up with my father, the doctor, was a treat in this way. I can't remember the number of times we'd be watching TV or he'd be reading the paper and he'd start fuming about how inaccurate the reporting on medical science was.
There was one TV report, years ago, about a drug that was causing side-effects, and the report didn't mention that the side-effects were only really a problem if you were taking another type of drug in addition to the one being examined. If you didn't have my dad next to you, you would have though the drug alone did the "bad things."
Boils down to lazy. And, as in any field, lazy is easier than thorough.
Posted by: Andy Havens | Sep 16, 2009 at 14:18
WHAT !!!!!!!
The actual line of which WOW appeared in 1994.It is true that the online concept only appeared in 2005. You can check
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft
The only reason why there might be a confusion is because it was only called "warcraft" between 1994 and 2005.
Posted by: sinuic | Sep 17, 2009 at 06:31
sinuic
no, the section is on 'internet addiction' i.e. online games, and the video is clearly about WoW not the Warcraft franchise generally.
Posted by: Ren Reynolds | Sep 17, 2009 at 06:41
While I appreciate the standards you're holding journalists to, you're right about being irritating: you grammar and syntax are sometimes irritating.
Posted by: Grammar Mama | Sep 17, 2009 at 10:18
Ren, you might appreciate this:
http://xkcd.com/386/
Posted by: Tastydogma | Sep 17, 2009 at 12:52
Grammar Mama needs a comma or an "r" in there.
Just saying.
Posted by: Mitch Evans | Sep 17, 2009 at 13:31
Ren - Warcraft is an online RTS game that uses Blizzard's battle.net as a game matching service. It is online, it is multiplayer, but it is scenario based, not a persistent world MMO.
It's a very different game from WoW though, and I was actually disappointed when WoW came out that they didn't emphasize the years of rich Warcraft lore in the MMO based on the same IP.
On the other hand, I doubt the journos thought that the guy had been addicted to the RTS game and moved on to WoW.
Posted by: Shava Nerad/Shava Suntzu in SL | Sep 18, 2009 at 11:11
There is also that good old "fact:" Gaming is bigger than Hollywood.
Sadly, journalists aren't the only ones who mangle sources and misstate quotes. I've recently found two academic papers with "quotes" from articles which don't say anything like that at all. In one instance I seemed to track it down to someone paraphrasing an article, then someone using that paraphrase as a quote and then a third scholar paraphrasing that "quote" and thus rendering it quite unlike what the original author wrote.
Posted by: jccalhoun | Oct 12, 2009 at 18:10
Ren, I am so with you here. We really need those T-shirts. Mathcing, we'll be a lot more irritating than just anonymously disappearing in the crowd.
Posted by: Torill | Nov 24, 2009 at 04:45