The latest entries on DeepFreeze.it highlight some of the issues happening on the front of ethics in games journalism.
There’s a tweet giving a rough update on the DeepFreeze main page.
…been a while, isn’t it?
DeepFreeze.it update.
8 entries. Affiliate disclosures, Brash Games, Alex Mauer.
Several new outlets.#GamerGate pic.twitter.com/n4PTx465uZ— DeepFreeze (@icejournalism) September 10, 2017
If you take a mosey on over to the main website, you’ll see that there’s a new entry for Josh Holmes’ report on Alex Mauer from back in July of 2017, where he attempted to self-anoint himself the Pope of journalism and annul the crimes of Mauer that were perpetuated against the indie developers who had used Mauer’s music in their projects.
Holmes, however, did not get off very easily and the Destructoid community decided to roast him over the proverbial coals of ethics like a pig over a pit at a luau out.
Eventually, publisher Niero Gonzalez hopped in to remedy the situation and update the article to reflect the realities of the Mauer situation. Deep Freeze labeled this under the “Amended Sensationalism” tag, showing that Destructoid is still in the ethics anonymous course to rectify their direction in the gaming industry and move away from the falsehoods and sociopolitical slants oftentimes associated with the Social Justice Warrior media clique.
Additional updates on DeepFreeze includes four new entries for Brash Games, including one entry for serious censorship when Paul Ryan attempted to change review scores and remove staff from the site to save face. There’s also a corruption tag for undisclosed native advertising, and there are two entries for dishonesty, one of which includes the change in review scores and the other is for the public statements Brash Games’ owner, Paul Ryan, made that contradicted testimony and proof provided by former staff and an in-depth investigation rolled out by OpenCritic.
The last three entries include Gamespot, VG 24/7 and The Verge all failing to disclose affiliate links in their articles, which seems to be a common trait amongst many of the big name sites, and something that Vox and Polygon were recently called out for.
