Remember my last post? When I wrote about being on TV? Yeah. That was awesome. Anyway, here's a slightly more serious follow-up.
The real reason I ended up declining participating in the media tour, in which I would have sat in a TV studio all night and fielded questions from TV stations from around the U.S. about video games and the upcoming E3 convention, is that it was--when the details started coming out--a serious ethical violation.
Turns out that my "news interviews" were actually being sponsored by one of the major gaming companies, and that part of the deal of the satellite media tour was that the journalist participating (which would have been me) would have been required to mention three specific games by said company in every single interview. This did not come out until after I had already agreed to the interviews. When I found this out, I told them to get lost. (And, by the way, and not that it matters, but they were three lousy games.)
So, here's how it would have gone down. You'd be watching the TV news. The anchor would say, "Well, the video game industry is gathered in LA this week for the big event of the year--E3. We're here with industry expert Jeff Green to find out what's gonna be hot at this year's show!" Then they would have switched to me, and there I'd be, a journalist, telling folks how excited I was to see three lousy games I would normally have had no intention of ever mentioning, BECAUSE THE GAME COMPANY HAD PAID TO HAVE THEM MENTIONED.
Nice, huh? Think about that the next time you watch the TV news. That "news" you're watching may very well have been bought and paid for.
did you die at e3?
Posted by: xian at May 28, 2003 7:32 AM