One major issue I have with the "corruption in games journalism" issue is this -

Do we know the names of the people who saw Gerstmann's review of Kane & Lynch and said it was unacceptable?

Do we know the name of the person who told Geoff Keighley he was going to film a segment surrounded by delicious Doritos(tm) and The Mounting Doo(tm)?

My issue with the debate right now is that it's centered on visible targets, and every good conspiracy theorist knows it ain't the people you *see* that you gotta be worried about. The writers, bloggers, video makers? The folks on the ground, in the trenches? They ain't calling the shots. What we're seeing from them when it comes to building hype, dismissing issues, or getting too pally with industry people could be considered ill-advised, for sure, but I would not call it corrupt. At worst, it's people being people and doing silly people things. I get overexcited sometimes, I am friendly with devs. I've admitted this before and will do so again. Because I'm a gamer. And we do that shit. We should try not to, sure, but we do.

Fact is, I don't *doubt* there's corruption in games media. I don't *doubt* there's corruption in almost any profit-making industry. But the corrupt, the truly corrupt? The ones with actual power to do any actual harm? They don't even know people are arguing on Twitter right now. They don't care. They're shaking hands with advertisers, they're polishing shareholder arserings, and they're far away from the ground. They're Longshanks, letting their reserves take the arrows from a safe, safe distance. And nobody knows their names.

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