@Jayl3w:

lolololololol...

outofreach

I agree he was given much legitimacy that he would not have otherwise had by his coverage in the gaming media. I think many would agree, through a reading of Thompson's writings that he was not in fact an authority on gaming. His comments often contain numerous factual errors and can even sound paranoid at times. But if a non-gaming reporter were to do his/her homework on the subject, they would find numerous articles in which Thompson is treated like any other legitimate source on our very own gaming sites. We may not take his ranting seriously, but to an outside observer, it certainly appears that we do. I think this is the point of Lowenstein's letter: That we are culpable in giving Jack Thompson the legitimacy he enjoyed for so long. I don't think Lowenstein is saying we should not cover dissenting opinions, and neither am I, but it is a disservice to the community at large to give such intense coverage to a person that by most accounts is largely ignorant of the medium we enjoy so much. In order to become an effective pundit, by definition one must know the subject matter inside and out. I think most will agree that Jack Thompson's knowledge of the subject of gaming was less than complete, to the point that covering his ignorant writings and intentionally erroneous claims was damaging to the community and gaming journalism in general.

That being said, I think for the most part Kotaku is a great gaming news entity and Brian Crecente and the staff are a credit to the industry.

-Hunter

HunterSG

@Beran: Yeah they gave him coverage But they never treated him as credible. When Fox news puts him on a panel with actual respected game journalists/insiders that's what makes him seem almost credible.
@Brian Crecente: yeah I see that, should have put letter instead of report in my original post. I just don't see how the main game media is culpable if you have no choice but to respond to a man who gets tons of media coverage on "real news" with many a crazy desciption caption under his name.

Grumpz®

He's right.

Not only did you guys keep giving him a platform when he deserved none, a critical error in judgment, but you did it solely to advance your own agenda. Setting him up as the straw man to your arguments about censorship. "Look at this guy! He's crazy! All video game censorship people are crazy!" Is it an agenda that I disagree with? No. Still, that's not how journalists are suppose to behave. By acting the way that you do, you only reinforce the concept that video games are something that are a waste of time, good only for kids and manchilds. That video games are not for serious people. That the industry surrounding video games is a joke.

But fact is, I've noticed something rather disturbing about the Kotaku staff. Namely, that they act like journalists until it is shown that they acted in some very non-ethical way, then they hide behind the "jeez, it's just a blog" excuse. If you want the industry to take you seriously as a journalist, you have to act like journalists ALL THE TIME, not just when you want to play pretend journalist. That extends to acknowledging when you're wrong. Look at what happened to Dan Rather. He has been permanently disgraced because he trust a biased witness and did no confirmation of evidence because it confirmed what he thought, even after it was proven to be a Microsoft Word-created lie. He to this day has not acknowledged that he was wrong to act the way he did, and he will probably never work again because of it. If even Dan Rather can be taken down and disgraced due to bad judgement, how much more can you guys?

thenino85

Of course gaming journalist helped make Thompson. If they hadn't given him headlines every time he opened his mouth, he wouldn't have caused near the stir that he did.

EmeraldDragon

I don't think it was bad to give media coverage to Jack Thompson. In the end it was about his horribly flawed view of video games and the people who play them that led to his downfall.
Coming here and spamming the comment boards in a place where people who obviously don't share his viewpoint is definitely a clamor for attention, kind of like an athiest going into a church and yelling about how there is no god. It's disrespectful and a cry for any kind of attention.
The coverage he was given helped all of us to show our point of view. Who knows what would have happened had everyone ignored him? Our side might not have been so strongly represented.
He had his arguments and you can't say they were completely unfounded, they were just exaggerated in the worst sense possible.

Fierfaerie

@outofreach: People in wheelchairs have one weakness: STAIRS

Giggity giggity, giggity goo. I'll be here all week.

Jayl3w

he was the game press' crack. And even as they said privately he was a kook, they treated him as if he was a credible, fair minded critic

with all due respect to Lowenstein, are you nuts? The game press made a herculean effort to give Thompson a chance to respond with open dialogue for opinions and issues that the game press almost universally disagreed with him on. Rather, the game press should be commended for, the most part, remaining professional throughout. In my opinion such a stance did a far more efficient job of exposing Thompson for the fraud he was. Particularly when he would simultaneously depend on the press to post his rants and press releases while treating them little better than a lump of shit on the sole of ones shoe.

C'mon Doug, you know better than that.

Cell9song

@EnigmaNemesis: The other thing is most of his 'convictions' were/are based on half-baked theory and opinion. I don't think Jack Thompson ever looked at legitimate research regarding video games, and if he did, he either ignored them or simply didn't understand the results.

I think it's a mental health issue with him ;)

homernoy

@outofreach:

As was I, hence the stand up comedy jab!

EnigmaNemesis

@gamegrump: "Jack Barr is so disthompsoned he has to change his name!"

Hahahaha that made my day...

TotaleeAwesome

Jack Thompson has done nothing but discredit the argument that videogames are dangerous to society.

What politician is going to want to follow in Jack's footsteps?

Who really wants to claim they share similar views with a guy that's been disbarred for them?

There is no doubt that his failure is going to benefit the industry for years to come.

Who wants to be the next Jack Thompson? Nobody.

outofreach

I remember seeing Kotaku, Destructoid, Joystiq, and tons of other gaming news blogs flooded with Thompson's scandals. That's how these things take proportion. It's up to the media to make the bad guys. If the media don't pay attention to the bad guys, they just dissapear out of the eyes of people.

Adverting eyes to lies isn't what I had in mind. But moderation might be a good idea, specially in this blog's case in the Thompson posts.

And yes, I fully understand that this blog govers gaming gossip as much as regular gaming news. Doesn't mean we gotta become sensacionalist in the process.

Ashurahori

@Grumpz®:

The man has a point, you know. Jack loved the attention, it's probably the only reason he bothered trying to fight freedom of speach in the name of freedom of speach so long.

The gaming press gave him far more coverage time then any other critic, responding to each of his wild claims with at least 1 lengthy news article.

Of course, saying that he wouldn't have stayed this long had the gaming media not paid attention to him is just silly, because had everything he's done for the last few years NOT been publicized there's no telling how the trial could have went. If a biased crazy man is in the forest, and no one is around to hear, does he yell about imagined injustices? (Protip:Yes.)

Beran

I certainly don't think the fact there was coverage was bad- his actions most certainly warranted it, and a lot of it was stuff we really did want to know about (Remember the PA incident? Still my personal fave). But I can't agree that we always portrayed his actions in the most meaningful manner...

It's like once we got the mindset that this man was off his rockers, the articles started only serving the purpose of just that rather than focusing on whatever was actually happening.

I could be wrong...

Kuroomu

@EnigmaNemesis:

I was only joking... don't you know sarcasm when you see it?

Lol... guess somebody hates stand up comedians.

outofreach

Well, yeah. He's right. The old cliche about "no bad publicity" certainly applies to Jack Thompson's exposure. The negative, but ubiquitous, coverage he got only energized him.

So, yeah. The press (and message boards too) would have been more high minded had they ignored him. But... gamers... high minded? No. Gamers like to play - Jack Thompson was a toy for us.

Jack Barr is so disthompsoned he has to change his name!

gamegrump

@outofreach:

Nice way to over-react and take his words out of context.

Whats next? Attacking stand up comedy?

EnigmaNemesis

@Lazlo:

His wife is LOADED, he really didnt "need" to work, but more of a "want" for agenda pushing motives.

Now I get what you are saying, but a person in his position, which is a highly objective position, should not have such extremist like actions ... it is dangerous, and the problem with our societies law makers and judiciaries.

EnigmaNemesis

@Jayl3w:

That's a pretty nice dig at the mentally ill...

Who's next, people in wheelchairs?

outofreach

I thought the coverage was a little excessive until the GTA IV NPR incident. Then it was no holds barred.

Always nice to have a moderator in the midst, though.

psychobaka

I found his coverage highly entertaining and scary at the same time. It was good that we were being reported his doings which were always funny because he was a kook. However it was also scary because everytime he was on TV i have a feeling a great many people took everything he said as hard fact. He may have united gamers in the fight against 1st amendment violations, but he may also have set gaming back a few years in the non gaming public's eyes.

I guess only time will tell.

parad0x360

I agree game journalists helped a ton. The regular controlled news outlets only gave the spin they wanted, instead of showing him for the loon he was.

I just hope one day that game journalism, doesn't get controlled spin like other outlets [i.e. news, Hollywood], even though you do have to question some of the corporate owned [i.e. IGN] sites.

EnigmaNemesis

Essentially: It's everyone else's fault but his own that he was an annoying, slightly psychotic, raving village idiot.

I mean sure, he's got convictions, but so does the homeless guy who commands his regiment of imaginary squirrel-people and draws on the walls with his own feces.

Conviction does not a good person make.

Jayl3w

Sensationalist media is the only kind of media people care about.

People want the extreme.

outofreach

It's actually kind of sad. Like, the guy is loosing his job for standing up for something he feels very passionately about. Granted, he went about "righting wrongs" in the worst possible ways, but at least he had convictions, and felt inclined enough to do something.

Not saying I'll miss him, but anytime a guys looses his job it's a sad day, even if he is a dickclown.

Lazlo

@Grumpz®: Keep in mind this is not the ESA speaking but only the personal opinion of Doug Lowenstein, the former head of the ESA. He also, of course, helped found the association.

Brian Crecente

at least they say the news outlets were worse. But then they immediately skip over that. What a jackass one sided report... since when did the game press "treat him as if he was a credible, fair minded critic."

Crecente says he respects the man's convictions, but that's about the most respect I've seen him get.

Grumpz®

Don't worry... it's okay. He was fun to hear about.

PatMan33

I would agree with him if the REAL "best journalism has to offer" actually did ignore him than the gaming press, in an effort to become that level of journalism, should have done the same.

However that didn't happen. And Lowenstein fully admits that.

What? Does he actually expect game journalism to hold itself to higher standards than the "best journalism has to offer" in this country?

As long as the mainstream media gives his loony ideas credence than the "alternative media" HAS to do the same. Not a single thing Thompson said or did would ever have made it to a Kotaku, Joystiq, whatever, if it hadn't gotten coverage from the likes of a CNN or Fox. And if he hadn't gotten that coverage he never would have had a soapbox and would have ended up being a COMPLETELY moot point in history.

Instead, he got mainstream cred. Maybe they knew he was a loon (as Lowenstein mentions) BUT THEY DIDN'T PRESENT HIM AS SUCH or even offer countvailing views. Talk about lacking journalistic integrity!

SigmaHyperion

@Lazlo: say the same thing you just said, but about George Bush. People need to be held accountable for taking their job seriously.

Grumpz®

We did ignore him at first, and that was a mistake.

Torusan

@TheGuilty1: "When news of Thompson's upcoming disbarment hit Kotaku, Lowenstein (who now works outside the industry) took the time to write me an email asking that I and other game journalists take this moment not to celebrate but to reflect on how culpable we were in helping create Thompson.
Jack Thompson created Jack Thompson. People were willing to listen and even pretend he was credible, but gaming journalism was just responding to someone they kinda had to.

Grumpz®

Personally, I think that it would have been remiss or even negligent of the gaming press to not respond to him. He spent a lot of his time attacking the very thing that they are meant to be writing about and support him.
If it isn't the gamer press' job to try and correct and rectify the vindictive, callous, sensationalist and often insulting smears and attacks made by him against the industry and us as gamers, who's job is it? Mainstream news sources simply gloried that they had found a new bogey-man to scare the masses into watching.
After every atrocity that Thompson attempted to demonise us with, I knew I could rely on the likes of Kotaku and gamepolitics to get a rational view of his arguments interspaced with those pesky facts that no-one else could be bothered to do the research to dig up. Just because he's one man thriving on the controversy, it doesn't mean that he should be allowed to go around mud-slinging with no come-back.
While it may be that other sites overhyped the whole JT thing to get hits, I am not aware of them as I generally found all I needed on the aforementioned pair.

djack

@Grumpz®: You're reaction sounds really extreme? Why so much hate for Doug? He's done more for gaming than you ever will.

I actually understand what Mr. Lowenstein is saying, but I have to disagree that the gaming media tried to make him seem credible.

TheGuilty1

@thenino85:

What does it matter what methods they used to making anti-game activists look like lunatics if it was for the greater good?

Ends justify the means.

outofreach

@Erode: I agree. I think the gaming media was a little too willing to give him his "soap box" opportunities, but in most cases (all that I can personally recall) he was regarded as "out of touch" and someone who didn't understand what it was he was rallying against.

zoompooky

"And even as they said privately he was a kook, they treated him as if he was a credible, fair minded critic."

....WTF? Where the hell was I when the gaming press thought of Jack Thompson as a credible anything? The most anyone did was give him the opportunity to present his side of an argument. An opportunity which he used to attack and insult the very people who were trying to understand him.

Erode

Kotaku does, at times, overuse the term "at times" such as in this article, at times.

:D

zoompooky

He´s right, the gaming media gave him a lot more publicity than he deserved, i understand that he was news (not really important or interesting ones) but the amount of exaggerated publicity he got made him think he was way more important than he was and the only way to control him was, infortunately for his family, to disbar him. Thompson was for the publicity (as he was back with 2LiveCrew) and the media gave him exactly what he wanted, instead of ignoring him and let gamepolitics and related sites to handle him. It the same thing that occurs with Uwe Boll, everyone disses him and calls him any ammount of insults, but he makes into the headlines and publicity is instantly made, with such amount of media coverage he has some justification to continue looking for stupid producers to continue making movies and the chain goes on and on.

I think that instead of everybody celebrating this disbarment thing (an awful thing since he has a family) the media and the industry should start to think about what they´ve done about this kind of people and what to do to minimize the effects they have on the industry, publicly or internally. That´s my two cents.

Daisuash

fuck him, somebody pass the champagne.

demonknightinuyasha

Jack Thompson went out of his way to vilify the gaming industry to the press. When such a blatant demagogue appears, especially one who has a voice in the halls of the very law that is the basis of our government, how can gaming journalists be expected to ignore him?

Regarding the way in which game journalists reported news about Thompson...

"And even as [the game press] said privately he was a kook, they treated him as if he was a credible, fair minded critic."

Here are some lines from Kotaku articles in 2006 and 2007:
"Everyone's favorite crazy attorney..."
"Breaking: IDIOT Thompson Blames VA Shooting on Games"
"Jack Thompson, ever the delusionist..."

Seems to me that Mr. Lowenstein's blanket statement is a bit broad and inaccurate.

And in the end, Thompson's rise to infamy may do some good. I have no problem shotgunning someone in a game. However, I would never think of doing the same in real life. Jack Thompson would have people believe otherwise, and without the press coverage of his rise and fall, many people who naturally may have the same viewpoint would also see me as morally lax. Hopefully, now those people will have second thoughts after seeing Jack Thompson's disbarment.

Repeat

Giving the man space on the blog legitimized him, despite his many cases that he lost because the judge thought that he was arguing baseless bullshit. Which he was.

If you don't think he was "legitimized" by it, think again: Ralph Nader always ran for President to get a message out. And when people voted for him or gave him press coverage, it made him seem like something bigger than he was. Both were/are paper tigers.

e-friend

@Cell9song: yeah, professional throughout, except for when Adam Sessler debates JT.

gojirah

I personally was never interested in what Jack Thompson had to say, whenever I've seen a topic on him all I can think is no point it's just going to filled with juvenile responses.

Part of it's down to the gaming media, he was given a platform to voice his opinion and gaming journalists then presented it to others saying "Here let's laugh at this guy."

I hope this is the last I hear about the subject.

Ravel

I don't think it's game journalists that are fully at fault. I mean, JT could best be described in the same terms as why folks go see monkeys at the zoo. They do crazy, stupid stuff, and they throw poo at things. Why go see the opera or that heartfelt movie with great cinamatography when you can see a monkey throwing poo!

It's not like he wasn't doing this sort of stuff with the music industry in the 80s after all. Or Janet Reno. Or all that other stuff he did.

Salen

@Grumpz®: I think what Doug is saying is that Journalists shouldn't have spent so much time on all of the e-mails jack sent and the stupid goals he set out to achieve. There is an equivalent congressman in California named Leland Yee that is pretty comparable and has yet to be glorified in California as much as Jack Thompson has been nationally. I admire the attempts of video game journalists to look at Jack objectively, but just mentioning him fueled his fire.

There were larger legal issues involving video games going on. I'm not saying those weren't reported by journalists like Kotaku, I just believe it shouldn't have delved beyond that. I don't blame them entirely for that. It is human nature to expose the ridiculous and completely retarded things in life. Besides, judging by the amounts of e-mail normal lawyers and Gamepolitics got from Jack Thompson, I doubt any media could've avoided writing about him. Besides, one sided slap fest trials are the only ones i'm interested in...

urban_ryoga

No one's saying "don't ever cover them," but let's be real. For all the hatred espoused, the gaming media was at Thompson's beck and call, ready to give him the attention he desired at a moment's notice. In the future, there has to be discretion in deciding what is important and what isn't. Him appearing on Fox News doesn't matter, as the Fox demographic is decidedly conservative and lost to us anyway. It's when he's helping draft legislation and representing families in court when we should be covering the man. Pick and choose your battles and all that.

RawSteelUT

@zoompooky:

I was about to say the exact same thing.

tzaketh

@RawSteelUT: The "Fox demographic" is only lost to you when you write them off. Providing reasoned, rational counterpoint can appeal to many conservatives even if it doesn't to the hard right.

Heck, I'm sure pointing out "LOOK AT THE CRAZY PERSON! SEE HOW HE'S LOST HIS MIND?" can sway people, if you back it up with compelling evidence that discredits the individual.

Gamers that don't want legislation mucking up our good, wholesome shoot-digital-people-in-the-face fun have to keep that in mind, I'd think.

-someone who's had to explain that Mass Effect is not one big sexy party to a good number of people, including customers at the video game shop I work for that had concerns we were selling said big sexy party game. (And don't get me started on GTA.)

pinkpuppet

Fair points, his raving self-promotion, and the headline-hungry coverage of his histrionics can't have helped ESA a whole lot, when gaming seemed to be under attack from many corners. During my short few months writing for a now defunct website I never wrote a Jack Thompson story, but like everyone else, I did take a kind of perverse pleasure in the way people would prod him just to see what he would do.

That picture of him with his fresh-bought copy of GTA IV still cracks me up.

I can't/don't believe we've heard the last of him.

JudgeNutmeg

@RawSteelUT:

You're really very very wrong here. The conservatives are lost to us?

Conservatives are much less likely to support censorship than liberal statists. It's just that a liberal is more likely to want to suppress "hate speech" than other things.

I don't know a single conservative who actually supports censorship except of broadcast radio and television.

Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman? You have censoring nutjobs on both sides of the aisle, because you have stupid people on both sides of the aisle, and you have assholes on both sides of the aisle.

To be a person like Jack Thompson or Joe Lieberman, you have to both stupid AND an asshole. They'll crop up everywhere.

tzaketh

@Lazlo: He's not losing his job for standing up for what he believed in. He's losing his job for behaving like a complete lunatic.

If he had promoted the same positions, but done so in a fashion that makes sense to sane people, he'd be fine. Instead, he did things like submitting porn in court filings, walking out of his own disbarment hearings, sending all kinds of harassing letters and faxes to anyone who seemed like a potential target, and so on.

EmpressInYellow

"There were and are legitimate grounds to criticize the game industry, and there were responsible and fair minded critics like Dave Walsh. But for the game press it was all Jack all the time."

He may have a point, considering I've never heard of Walsh.

tzaketh

@SigmaHyperion: Coverage by the gaming media opened the door for questing his views. Before someone like Thompson goes on a serious show, interns research him (i.e. Goolge). I'm confident that before this interview, a few Kotaku articles were read by the Hardball staff.

+ Watch video

Thank you Crecente, you likely had a significant role in exposing the true Jack Thompson to the world.

JakeLL

@Beran: Yea but Jack getting the attention he wanted made more people pay attention to him... and then the more people paid attention, the more they realize how baseless his claims were.

JakeLL

@tzaketh: He's a halo player / nobody.

e-friend

This is just like how the Batman created Joker.

Sullyville

@tzaketh: I think I <3 you.

pinkpuppet

@Lazlo:

If it's any consolation, he didn't go down for standing up for his beliefs. He went down for completely abusing the US legal system.

SuperMaxZero

He was the A-hole you love to hate. I'm glad he got so much coverage, I found it entertaining. The only people who have something to be sorry for are those who took him seriously.

duckmouth

@tzaketh: You do have a point that there are assholes on both sides of the aisle, and perhaps singling out one type of asshole was way off base, and for that I apologize. Though in all fairness, to call Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton liberal is as silly as calling Arnold Schwarzenegger a conservative. Lieberman and Clinton are among the more conservative politicians in the Democratic party - especially Lieberman, who still baffles me by not just going over to the Republicans and being done with it.

However, you ARE right. No doubt the extreme liberals such as Ted Kennedy would be just as harmful. Their attempts to censor religion have gone far beyond the bounds of separating church and state, for example.

RawSteelUT

@gojirah: There never was and never will be anything professional about Adam Sessler.

Far as I'm concerned, he's just another big bag of douche on camera.

Jayl3w

I really don't think there's much that "could have been done" about the coverage on Thompson. This is a video game site, with constant video game coverage. It would almost be a disservice to consciously decide to not cover Thompson. Much like we get kicks from the coverage of Boll's next movie (or...game), Thompson was always that guilty pleasure that we knew, by covering him, was only making him stronger (or perhaps just more insane), but really couldn't help ourselves.

I think that ultimately Thompson got a power high from all of this, which is really what led to his final (if not always inevitable) downfall.

RealmRPGer

@Lazlo: I don't feel bad at all, and it should have happened a long time ago. Just another publicity hound that gets to go bye-bye. I'm sure Fox news will still probably trot him out next time a "crazy" person does something. I just wonder what kind of banner they will put under his name.

Pornosaur

I don't see anything wrong with the press building Jack Thompson up as 'that crazy guy who thinks video games are all murder simulators'. There are always going to be scared old people who believe this, and until they hurry up and die (damn Boomers), it's a good thing if the guy representing the enemy is an obviously insane psychopath.

Maybe we don't 'need' Jack Thompson, but I think he's awfully nice to have around.

sarusa

Provocative. He makes excellent points. Should there be another Thompson... Do not invite him into the circle of legitimacy. At the same time, even though game journalists get to live the gamer's dream (even wearing their pajamas to work and failing to shower on occassion) their standard of journalism needs to be second to none.

randlsa

All I know is if I ever make a severly demented game my Hero is going to be Jack Thompson and he will battle the evil Lowenstien corporation for control of the world!

onepoker

@Grumpz®: Or Darth Vader. :P

RiceBandit

@EnigmaNemesis: That's kind of a crazy conspiracy theory. Many of the giant media conglomerates that "control" the news also own stake in or have partnerships with video game companies. Do you really think the goofy TV news' spin on the video game industry is part of some vast overarching corporate directive, when, say, Fox owns IGN or CBS' corporate parent has a publishing deal for Rock Band? Or are the media simply out of touch because so many of the industry's tenured, veteran leaders have never played a video game? I'm betting it's the latter. As someone who's worked in "the media" for a decade, I have yet to receive one single directive from corporate.

Dirk Dorkelson

@urban_ryoga: Leland Yee is a California state senator, not a congressman.

Dirk Dorkelson

I think Doug Lowenstein is way off base here...

[www.gamepolitics.com]

GamePolitics

I think I'm having withdrawals from lack of Jack news. I need my fix now! :p

munkah

I'd much rather prefer giving money to an industry that doesn't try to pass the buck at every possible moment while refusing to stand up to a bully when the have all the means to do so.

NoFunShogun

@Torusan: I agree. If anyone was at fault here I feel it was the Lowenstein run ESA. If Thompson had been exposed as the kook he was from the start he wouldn't have been able to cause half the trouble he did later.

MattB

@Lazlo: I understand where you're coming from, but from a long time reading about his exploits I doubt he has any genuine convictions. Seems to me he's being self serving for whatever reason.

MattB

I agree with what Doug Lowenstein says in his email. Thompson was only boosted and given a measure of credibility he would not have achieved had it not been for game media coverage of him. It's why they say any kind of publicity is good publicity.

Mobus

To be fair, it is mostly Kotaku's fault that this went on as long as it did.

Calhoun

@JakeLL: That's the part people don't get.

Traditional media outlets are LAZY. And they don't want to do research to find credible sources; they'll just pick any asshat who claims to have an opinion.

That man was JT.

Kotaku did their part to show just how delusional they were in making that assumption. But no, let's rip on Kotaku for "making" Jack. That's bullshit.

Spoony Bard

To be completely honest the ones who should be acountable for the problem are gamers themselves (me included of course, but then again I don't live in the US). A news or journalist site is not supposed to ignore problems or try to right the wrongs of the world, a news media job is to give the news as objectively as possible so that the perusers know them and can do something about them.

Did someone here really stood up and said to non gamers friends or family?, "you know this guy right here is full of shit, he twists and abuses the system for his own good, so here are the real facts about it", or done something else with the info apart from snickering at him, making jokes about him or whining with people who already knew Jack Thompson?

There is a good documentary about the press in Chile in the times of Pinochet, journalist there weren't allowed to divulge "real" news, just what was deemed acceptable, so they rebelled and said "people need to KNOW what is happening" so they started investigating and printing the the real news, disapperances, oppresions and the like. Eventually (yes eventually, we are talking about a goverment who could disappear a person, completely and I do mean that literally, as if he never existed) many people began to realize and have proof of just how fucked up things had become and then they stood up against him.

Admitedly comparing Pinochet to Thompson is not really apropriate, but the point stands, journalist (or at least good ones) should make people aware of what is happening, so that people can do informed decisions and take action, nothing is gained by ignoring a problem, and to put it straight the problem never was Jack Thompson's insane antics or misguided beliefs about videogames, the real problem was that people were starting to take him seriously and belive what he was saying as truth.

Also a monkey in a Blender gets stabbed by Darth Vader while a gopher screams "SNAAAAAAAAAKEEEEEE" (just because I would really, Really like to get some replies, so meme explosion for you)

Soleyu

@outofreach: Because it makes us no better.

MightyHealthy

And don't forget those murderers, the gaming industry is partly at fault... Oh wait...

I call bull on this. Jack was appearing on the morning network news every damn time there was a shooting, that has nothing to do with gaming websites/blogs or whatever.

News flash: Someone egging you on or teasing you does not make you become unethical.

Kuromimi

@PatMan33: Ya I enjoyed stories of his antics too. Especially the Halo one... Jeebus that was hilarious.

Lessthan_tom

@Dirk Dorkelson: Yeah, I never bothered to actually see his real position. Just know that I always heard from him in the San Jose Mercury news if Jack Thompson wasn't making news elsewhere.

urban_ryoga

@Mobus: The gaming industry called BS on EVERY ONE of his anti-gaming statements. How the hell does THAT give him "credibility" unless it's to influence non-gamers in the wrong way?

Nettacki

@Grumpz®: So, that wasn't a "report". It was a letter from Doug Lowenstein to Kotaku. (And I wouldn't be suprised if were sent to many other Game Reviewers/Reporters.)

ssoltero

@Soleyu: I agree, wholeheartedly.

The_Mysterious_J

Ridiculous. He's blaming the press for doing their job? It's their duty to cover the news when it happens. If there was one person causing a stir it was Jack Thompson himself. This ESA president is clearly shifting blame in order to bolster his own reputation. Perhaps Jack Thompson would not have been such a threat in the first place if the ESA had taken the right measures to counter Jack Thomspon's arguments in the first place...

The_Mysterious_J

Realistically, if the gaming press hadn't said anything, the real press still would. They gave him more coverage than anyone, full well knowing that the man was a nut. But, that's why they loved him, because he would stir everyone up. And, if the gaming press had stayed quiet about it, they would have been criticized for that too, so it's not like they could stay quiet.

KendrickFish

"Ends justify the means." The words of Hitler, George W. Bush, Bill Gates, and the 1919 Black Sox's.

UstinMarstuno