EA Vs. Fox News: One Apology Down, One To Go
Cooper Lawrence, the self-help author who appeared on Fox News to malign the sexual content of Mass Effect, admitted to the New York Times in an interview that she "misspoke" when she compared the game to misogynistic pornography.
I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke. ... Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography. But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.
Of course, it's sad that she makes this admission only after her Amazon rating was decimated, and not out of some journalistic integrity. Sadly, she does not offer an apology to darlin' Geoff Keighley, who had pretty much already explained everything she admits here while they were on air, only to be ignored by both Cooper and the Fox News panel.
This is the second time in as many weeks that gamers have forced contrition out of people who just don't know what they're talking about, and hopefully in the future, people will think more about the consequences of opening their mouths without thinking first. As in all areas of mainstream entertainment, there's a lot to criticize about parts of the game industry - actual misogyny, homophobia, racism - and it would be nice if issues could be discussed rationally, without all of this "Won't someone please think of the children!" nonsense.
Author Faults a Game, and Gamers Flame Back [New York Times]
[via: GamePolitics]
Dawdle
Posted to Video Games on 26 January 2008
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: apology, cooper lawrence, ea, fox news, mass effect, xbox 360
i think they fixed her amazon rating since the number of ratings went from 400+ to only 22 but nonetheless the book is still rated 1.5 stars which proves (at least in my mind) it is a crappy book. yet again i wouldn't have to even read it to give it that rating ;p
I wonder if gamers are "at ease with the byways of cyberspace" enough to make that article one of the most emailed articles on the New York Times.
;)
Isn't it cute how people get on "news" programs to debate things without knowing a damn thing about them? And it's not just video games. Watch anything where adults are debating something that concerns teens or children and they will always mispronounce it and say random things that have nothing to do with the product just to scare parents.
I am happy she's getting crap for this, not just because I'm a gamer, but also because I have some interest in psychology/sociology and my husband's got a counseling psych master's - Lawrence's B.S. and claims about what the "research" supposedly shows, and her condescending attitude, really made psychiatry look bad - and psychiatry already has enough quacks making it look bad to lay people.
Which sucks because there are a lot of really great psychologists/psychiatrists out there, but most of them aren't media whores and they usually aren't the ones getting invited to lopsided debates on corporate news broadcasts.