Does the average #GamerGater has about as much real understanding of “ethics in journalism” as a dirty sock?
Over on KotakuInAtion, which describes itself as “the almost-official #GamerGate subreddit” and “the main hub for GamerGate discussion on Reddit,” the regulars have given hundreds of upvotes to this little post on media “ethics.”
![[Ethics] CNN releases personal info of the Oregon shooter, despite law enforcement imploring the media not to. (vid.me)](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ethics2.png?resize=530%2C119&ssl=1)
To make sure everyone understands what an “ethical” issue this is, the post is helpfully labeled “ethics,” twice.
Now, it’s one thing to say “I wish the media would cover mass shooting cases less sensationalistically,” or “I wish the media would focus more on Chris Mintz, the hero who put himself in the line of fire in order to protect others, rather than on the cowardly killer.” There are plenty of things to criticize about the media coverage of the case.
But demanding that the media not report something because the police don’t want them to? That’s not “media ethics.” That’s being a lapdog.
It’s the job of the media to report things that the police don’t want them to report.
To their credit, there are some commenters making this point in the KotakuInAction thread. But they aren’t the ones getting hundreds of upvotes.
Apparently, to a lot of #GamerGaters, it’s “unethical” for the media to ever say or do something they disagree with.
Somehow relevant.
@ David
The anonymity of rape victims in the UK is prescribed by law. Many editors have stated that they believe this to be an unwarranted interference with press freedom. If it was up to the media to decide they would name.
Wasn’t this a major component of Gamergate since the beginning? Considering the “‘gamers’ are over” article and their hatred of Anita Sarkeesian and all.
From the linked thread:
“Everyone loves bullies. Bullies are popular and well-respected. It is not possible to be a bully and not be popular and well-respected, because bullies need to be popular and well-respected to perpetrate bullying, and because punishing unpopular people makes you popular and well-respected.”
And suddenly I completely understand why Gomblrgokkers insist that they’re the real victims in all of this. They’re unpopular IRL you see, and therefore can’t be cowardly fucking bullies who are hellbent on destroying the private lives of women they don’t like.
“Why didn’t the police want his identity to be released? Minimising glorification?”
Nobody could fathom this guy would be “glorified”. Usually police don’t want media to report things that are crucial to an ongoing investigation that may harm said investigation.
It glorifies him in the minds of pathologically angry young men who don’t feel empathy for any of the victims.
I was dumb enough to try confronting a bunch of Gaters when one posted a conspiratorial-minded video (from some random person on YouTube, of course) about how Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn’s panel at the UN would lead to INTERNET CENSORSHIP(!!!!!).
One of the people who replied, as usual, with the “both sides do it!” gambit and then I brought up that it’s a bit difficult to believe that when one side actively uses the Breitbart website as a source of information and associates with Neo-Nazis. That person’s response? Andrea Dworkin.
Nevermind that Dworkin is neither a journalist or really that popular among feminists – but they like to keep bringing her up, as if her fanbase is so ubiquitous that you constantly bump into them both online and off…but this never happens. Even at universities, where these likely imagined horror stories from anti-feminist take place, I’ve yet to come across a single one – much less a group.
The whole event made me wonder why I even bother trying to debate them: they equate online harassment with “criticism”, they’re so immersed in internet culture that they assume pundits or other prominent people whose visibility is restricted to that format are more well-known outside it than they really are, and they apparently think that identifying and discouraging problematic behaviors are “drastic measures” (as if society hasn’t been doing that already).
At that point, how the fuck can you take anything they say seriously and not just presume their handle on the language in general is tenuous at best? The reason GamerGate started at all was because some ex-boyfriend wanted to get back at his former indie developer girlfriend, not because a reviewer was fired because he didn’t give a game a perfect score (like Jeff Gerstman did) or how publishers go out of their way to try and impress reviewers with gifts and treats in order to do so.
“Ethics in journalism” to them might as well mean “Blue Spaghetti Tinfoil” to everyone else.
But gators apparently think it’s fine to distribute (imagined) details of someone’s sex life.
Dworkin is probably on the reading list if you take certain upper division women’s studies classes. But that doesn’t mean the professor agrees with her work.
Umm in a lot of cases the police don’t want the name released until the family gets a chance to get a lawyer or some sort of protectiom, because past cases have had families be harassed and threatened, and it’s not really right to have the shooters parents or siblings suffer because they are victims too. Also once the names are released their life’s will turn into a media circus.
And I really do think the shooters family are victims too, he made a desision and now they will spend their life’s suffering and maybe even blaming themselfs.
Studies suggest that these shootings are primarily motivated by the shooter looking for fame, and putting shooters all over the news contributes to more shooters going out, but that has nothing to do with the “ethics” of posting or not posting his name.
Incidentally, this time some of the major outlets have done a remarkably good job of not plastering the headlines with his face and name. It’s a good middle ground they’ve taken this time, publishing his name in places within the article but using “shooter” in the headlines.
Some of them are still psychoanalyzing his life and motives which is also something studies suggest avoiding, but I’ve noticed less of that this time around.
@History Nerd:
The guy who brought up Dworkin even made that out to be a “he said, she said” thing when – for fuck’s sake – it isn’t. The guy took something that was wholly private (their relationship) and then decided to put all that information out there, more or less as an act of vengeance. Gjoni is the one at fault but, of course, since these Gaters fell for his disingenuous woe-is-me theatrics and feel the need to empathize with him – apparently it’s totally okay. ‘Cause reasons.
Again, “ethics in journalism” may as well be any Dadaistic phrase and make about as much sense. Because their definition of such changes on a whim and often doesn’t resemble how it’s widely defined.
I honestly can’t help but think they’ve become so immersed in internet culture that they have a disconnect with reality. It’s one of the only ways to explain their utterly idiosyncratic logic.
Of course not, or a number of other feminists, but that doesn’t matter to them. For their kind, the exception is the rule – unless it is one of their own.
They’ll take any single quote from a feminist, whose influence is likely regulated to online and largely on YouTube, to claim that is what all feminists believe and none of them give it a second thought. Someone could quote dozens upon dozens of Gaters’ death and rape threats towards a single woman – but those apparently “don’t count” and somehow doesn’t represent them as a group. ‘Cause reasons. Even though you see far more of that from them than you would feminists who agree with the notion that Isaac Newton’s mathematics were inherently misogynistic (yes, that was their “evidence”).
Though, I have to confess — it always stuns me when KiA actually starts a discussion about journalistic ethics!
I guess even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.
The “science wars” are dead. There actually were some people in the 1980’s and 1990’s who said stuff that appeared to mean stuff like that calculus or physics is inherently sexist. Many people with advanced degrees in math and science happened to be leftists and feminists and they showed that much of that was ridiculous. There’s also been more of a realization that stuff like evo psych and the race and IQ claims have been debunked on scientific grounds. I’d say most scientists are at least skeptical of evo psych, but many of the race and IQ people are now remembered for their contributions to math and statistics rather than psychology.
I don’t think Andrea Dworkin wrote very much about science or science culture anyway.
a woman, Kim Saltmarsh Dietz puts herself inthe doorway to protect othersand paidwith her life. She was pagan and middle aged so she doesnt fit the current narrative. But we need to remember her.
What they meant to say is “Straw Dworkin”.
I was never a fan, but much of what is attributed to her is out of context or flat out incorrect.
I just finished rereading Right-Wing Women and somehow never noticed it was written by THAT Dworkin.
Make no mistake, she was off-puttingly strident, needed an editor(and probably a publicist), and her style of complex, compound modifiers predicating any noun or verb, sometimes going on for a half page or more, gets a bit wearing. But her observations were spot on; one could say, given the time period and the seriousness of the issues she addressed, her approach might have been the only way anyone was going to listen.
Not my favorite social justice author, but I’ve a new respect for her.
@hekatesgal:
Thank you. I didn’t know that, and now I do. I’ll bring her name up when I discuss it in future.
So, about not publishing the names of rape victims… I don’t like it. Or at least, I don’t like it being treated differently than with other crimes — assault victims are named, but involve genitals and it’s suddenly so different that anonymity is required? It seems, to me, to contribute to, or maybe stem from, the idea that rape is the worst crime EVAR and all the bullshit about how it’s a stranger in bushes and my buddy would never rape his GF, just cuz she’s drunk doesn’t mean she can’t consent! And also… don’t sully her good name by letting people know she’s not a virgin? The stench of sexual shaming hangs around, idk if that’s just a hang over from when virginity was vital to marriage or a result of the fundamental inability to grasp that rape is about power, not sex, or what, but yeah, it’s weird.
Idk if not publishing victim names (or at least expanding it to cover other assaults), or always publish names, or deal with rape culture first, or what. But it bugs me.
I’ve just tossed out so many more questions than I have answers for >.<
@Argenti: I would think it does have something to do with sex shaming, and at the same time, not wanting people to be constantly bringing up a source of trauma for the victim. It’s preventing other people from shaming the victim, I guess?
Assaults are terrible, yeah, but those tend to also leave more visible stuff on your body, instead of just mentally scarring you for the rest of your life.
With rape, I’d say it’s more like “we know you’ve been raped, and we’d like to keep that on the down-low because it’s just better if people don’t know about that and attempt to use it against you.” Because, unfortunately, sex-shaming is a thing, and I don’t think publishing the names of rape victims is going to help that much.
From personal experience: I was grateful that other people didn’t know about it, because I was sick of talking about it (school counselor, my mom, the police, a jury, ect.), and it helped me feel like the world was still kind of normal.
That, and I hated it whenever someone would say “I’m sorry” or give me a pitiful look. It made me feel worse, so people still treating me as they normally did made me feel a bit better.
Things were never the same, obviously, but they were better because I wasn’t being sexually abused anymore.
http://www.people.com/article/eric-dietz-opens-up-about-losing-kim-dietz
The survivors themselves are free to go public if they like.
I think the difference between rape and other crimes, in this context, is that people do bad things to people who speak up about being raped. Being known as a rape victim messes up your life in a way that being known as a theft victim or battery victim or fraud victim doesn’t.
I would be in favor of suppressing other crimes on a similar basis. Theft of images, for instance. If the press is reporting on a revenge porn case / revenge porn site, they really shouldn’t name the women whose pictures are on there.
PI,
what is your stance on outing? It feels analogous to me. A just society wouldn’t discriminate against gay folk or rape survivors, but ours does. If the press treats these as big secrets, you could say they reinforce the shame. But they’re also giving the people affected the chance to pick their battles.
I’m about to go to bed, but am popping in to say that I am kinda on the side of keeping victim’s identity secret in general — yeah, rape has the stigma, but treating it as completely different from any other crime isn’t gonna help that any.
Yes, and the tabloids would name and shame creating dangerous situations. They (esp. the Daily Mail) obsess on spreading a narrative of widespread false allegations by women already, counter to the facts.
There are often reasons to keep details of a crime secret. One reason is to help filter witness testimony; if someone knows details that weren’t publicly released, they’re probably an actual witness. That’s not really applicable here, though.