K. Thor Jensen · @kthorjensen
5th Sep 2014 from TwitLonger
On Media Journalism And "Objectivity"
The unifying message of rational actors in the recent debate has been a request for reform in games journalism and a shift towards transparency and objectivity.
I'm going to take a little bit to talk about games (and other media) journalism and bias. I'll try to make it fun. I've spent nearly twenty years working in media journalism and content production in a variety of different areas, so hopefully I have some idea of what I'm talking about.
A significant amount of criticism was leveled at gaming news outlets for their lack of concern in covering what gamers saw as an instance of interpersonal corruption due to a romantic relationship between a journalist and a game developer.
Full stop: undisclosed personal relationships between journalists and their subjects are ethically improper and journalists should recuse themselves from covering those subjects in any venue that they are being financially compensated for doing so.
But the reason that this ethical violation wasn't considered as devastating in the culture of media journalism is because media journalism exists solely as an implement for top-down institutional corruption from content creators.
Here's an anecdote. A few years back I was working for a mid-level men's entertainment website, covering movies, TV, games, et cetera. A movie company flew me out to Lake Tahoe for a press event for Hot Tub Time Machine - cast interviews, a screening, a party, skiing, other leisure activities.
These press events are incredibly common. The content creators pay for everything: travel, lodging, food, entertainment and typically also give you a "per diem" of cash for additional expenses.
In speaking with other journalists who attended with me (of which there were over 100), it became obvious that few if any of us were "A-list" personages in movie journalism. There were representatives from various websites and even one kid who wrote for a college newspaper in Canada.
On the shuttle back to the airport on the last day, one of the writers and I did some back of the envelope math on how much this event cost MGM to put on. With conservative estimates, we figured that including flights, lodging, facility rentals, staffing fees, food costs, per diems and other items that it was somewhere around $200,000 for the whole weekend.
If a company is willing to blow $200,000 for Hot Tub Time Machine and a bunch of C-list bloggers, imagine how much money is being spent for large properties, on large outlets?
Asking a journalist to be upset about an interpersonal exchange where coverage of questionable value was provided in an environment where tremendous amounts of money and time is being spent on a daily basis to influence coverage is like being upset that a man standing in a tank of human shit doesn't apologize for farting.
There is no need for content companies to spend this amount of time and money to give journalists the necessary information they need to report to their audience. They could have put us all on a Greyhound bus to Muncie, Indiana and did the entire thing in a windowless gray room.
And, of course, there is no explicit communication of value exchange in these events. Nobody says "Because we brought you to Lake Tahoe for a weekend and took you skiing and fed you a steak as thick as your wrist, you must give Hot Tub Time Machine a B+ or better." I would have reviewed Hot Tub Time Machine either way, and I'd like to think that my review would have been the same either way.
But there's no way to know. Force always has impact, whether overt or subtle, and it's possible - and even likely - that my review was biased due to the fact that I got to go on a free vacation and meet Crispin Glover.
But for this access - and access is key to commercially successful journalism - I had to play along. I had to go on the trip to get the interviews and see the movie early so I could have a review up before the film opened. Media journalism is completely and utterly dependent on the largesse of content providers, who in turn realize that since none of them have any advantage over the other, they must deploy a variety of quasi-ethical influence to affect bias. It's a snake eating its own tail, and has been since the enthusiast press was successfully monetized.
So can we have "objectivity" then?
Objectivity is a myth. There can be no truly objective perspective because "reality" is a construct that we interpret through our incredible cognitive capacity and deeply flawed senses. It's a construct that we build through our past experiences, and it's a construct that we rely on when we present our perspectives to those external to us.
So let's unpack what people are talking about when they talk about "objectivity."
I think there are a number of competing definitions here, and they hinge on two perspectives as to what "media journalism" is.
The first perspective regards media journalism as strictly an accessory to the function of capital: "will I find this product to be a fair exchange for the money and time that I will place into it?" This is the roots of the enthusiast press, and it's a valuable service.
The second perspective regards media journalism as a branch of the larger practice of cultural criticism. In this perspective, media is a object to be examined and explored through a variety of lenses and perspectives. These perspectives are not consumer-focused - they do not address the "value" of the product in regards to capital.
Some gamers define "objectivity" as media journalism from the first perspective exclusively. This is completely acceptable! A number of smaller websites in recent days have stated that they will provide coverage exclusively on the basis of consumer interest. If this is an issue for you, I encourage you to support those websites.
But don't for an instant think that those websites are "objective." By receiving advertising and access from content providers, they are engaging in the same systematic top-down corruption that all other media journalism is engaged in, simply to a different degree.
Other gamers define "objectivity" as media journalism that conforms to their personal bias. That's totally fine! The human brain is wired to filter through great amounts of data to extract what it needs to satisfy itself. One thing that has severely muddled the water in the recent debate has been the contrast between feminist and anti-feminist biases presented alongside the discussion of journalism and ethics.
Before I go on: Feminist biases are completely valid. Anti-feminist biases are ALSO completely valid. That's how it works.
Much of the initial criticism of problematic elements of gaming culture has come from a feminist bias. That is because, as an ideology, feminism is relatively well-evolved and established. It is natural for proponents of an ideology to apply it to the wider world around itself, in order to understand both the world and the ideology better.
Conversely, much of the more significantly broadcast communication on the opposing side of the issue in recent weeks has come from an anti-feminist bias. Not all of it, mind, and I'm starting to see more high-profile messaging around the core issue, but a good amount. And, because the core messaging was seen as sympathetic, those biases were downplayed or ignored.
The issue here is implying that an institution's bias or the personal biases of actors within those institutions are required to change in order to conform to your bias. This is anathema to the very principles of free communication that this nation was founded upon.
No amount of leverage is going to make a person or institution abandon their core biases. Bias is the core of opinion, and opinion is the core of media journalism. You're not going to be able to transform Breitbart into the Daily Kos, no matter how much you squeeze, and vice versa.
So how can we create a consumer-focused conversation on the "worth" of products where the involved parties are influenced solely by personal bias and not institutional bias?
What would you say if I told you it was already happening? It's happening on r/Gaming. It's happening on NeoGAF. It's happening on Selectbutton. It's happening on /v/.
These are communities of enthusiasts that are organizing around pure interest in gaming, without any content creator leverage being applied to them. There is no financial interest for them to speak well or poorly about any given product. And these communities typically self-select around reasonably congruent personal biases (with inevitable outliers) - they are drawn together because of similar preferences and values. That makes their service to each other pure because it is completely outside the system of influence. They provide their perspectives without compensation.
This is the "objective" games journalism that gamers are crying out for. They're already creating it, on a community level, each and every day. They simply need to recognize and embrace their power, rather than placing it into the hands of a system of capital.