Mail's Call of Duty 'fury'

The Mail's sensationalist reporting about video games continues with an article about the latest instalment of Call of Duty:


It seems that headline has been changed, and toned down, at least once - the URL reveals the Mail originally said the game 'recreates 7/7 Tube bomb attacks' rather than 'features 7/7 Tube bomb-style attacks'.

The article explains:

In one particularly vivid shot, an armed soldier on a truck cuts in front of a Tube carriage, derailing and causing it to explode.

Despite being 'ultra-violent' and causing such 'fury', the Mail has helpfully embedded the game's trailer at the end of their article. It does indeed show a truck ramming into a Tube train and causing it to derail.

But there's no explosion of that Tube carriage in the trailer. There's no bomb attack. There's no suicide bomb attack. There's no recreation of 7/7. There's no 7/7 bomb-style attack.

Indeed, the quote that ends the article, from Activision, the makers of the game, makes clear:

'The scenes in the game are entirely fictional and are not intended to recreate any historical events.'

So what of the 'fury'? The Mail claims:

Supporters of those affected by the 7/7 suicide attacks in July 2005, which killed 52 people, called for Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to be banned.

It's not clear who these 'supporters' are. The article only manages to produce one outrage quote and that comes from Mail favourites Mediawatch-UK. And although they say, rather predictably, that the game is in 'incredibly poor taste' they don't actually say it should be banned. Nor does anyone else in the article.

(More on the Mail's article from Minority Thought and CVG. See also a CVG post on the Mail's misleading article 'Playing football games on computers 'makes you more aggressive'' from a few weeks ago.)

The Sun, video games and rickets

On Friday, a press release from Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust reported on research from consultant orthopaedic surgeon Professor Nicholas Clarke and Dr Justin Davies, a consultant paediatric endocrinologist. After checking over 200 children in Southampton for bone problems, Clarke and Davies found that more than one-fifth showed signs of rickets.

CVG point out that when the Sun got hold of the press release, their 'Staff Reporter' produced an article that looked like this:

But by Saturday, in the hands of Health and Science Editor Emma Morton, the story changed to this:


As Tim Ingham at CVG noted:

Both pieces...contain exactly the same information and quotes.

Could it be that the first story has been hastily edited and re-printed in a desperate attempt to mould it to The Sun's anti-games news agenda?

We're not cynical enough to suggest so. It's just... aside from its screaming headline, the second story only mentions video games once, in its opening paragraph. The rest is pretty much a carbon copy of the original report. Even The Sun's own doctor, Carol Cooper, doesn't mention games in her analysis.

Nor indeed does the Mail, which always likes to blame video games for something.

As Ingham points out, Clarke is quoted as saying that this increase in rickets is:

"...a completely new occurrence that has evolved over the last 12 to 24 months."

Yet kids have been playing video games for rather longer than that. And there's simply no mention of video games in Southampton Hospital's press release, which makes clear:

...the disease is now making a comeback around the world due to low vitamin D levels caused predominantly by lack of exposure to sunlight and also poor diet.

It also says absolutely nothing about whether 'game addict kids' are more likely to suffer with rickets.

But this isn't the first time this year this has happened. Ingham recalls similar research by Professor Simon Pearce and Dr Tim Cheetham of Newcastle University that was published in January and which led to the Times and the Metro to make the same link. When contacted by Nicholas Lovell about the media reports, Cheetham said:

"We do not say that gaming causes rickets."

Pearce added:

"The average age of a child with rickets is around 20 months old: too young to use a keyboard and mouse!"

(Hat-tip to Jay and Tim Ingham)

Rockstar Games win libel damages over Star lies

Rockstar Games have won 'substantial damages' from Express Newspapers over the Daily Star's now-notorious article claiming they were planning a Raoul Moat version of their Grand Theft Auto series.

The Star issued a swift apology to their ludicrous 'story' where they admitted:

'We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication'.

And they made no attempt to use common sense either.

In court today:

Clare Kissin, counsel for Express Newspapers, said: "Express Newspapers Ltd accepts that the allegations made against Rockstar Games are untrue. The defendant apologises for the upset and damage caused."

Meanwhile, Roy Greenslade reports that Express Newspapers made a loss of £15m last year and, as a result, Richard Desmond has increased the price of both the Express and the Star.

He expects people to pay 30p for the dreadful Daily Star now.

Mail's small apology to Small World

The Mail has apologised for falsely accusing the board game Small World of being at the centre of a case of online game addiction and child neglect:

An article published on 13 September, 'Addicted to a fantasy world: Mother obsessed with computer game let her children live in squalor' reported court proceedings which referred to a game called Small World.

In fact, Small World was not the game in question.

We are happy to make this clear and apologise to the publishers of Small World for any contrary impression given.

The publishers of the game, Days of Wonder, had issued a strong statement in response to the original articles, pointing out the lazy 'Google Journalism' involved. They also threatened legal action, which may well explain why the Mail has apologised so swiftly.

But the wording of the apology is typically weak. The Mail published a lengthy article directly accusing Small World and included screenshots of the wrong game. 'Contrary impression' doesn't really cover it.

(Hat-tip to Picklechu)

When a newspaper makes a mistake, it's a Small World

A few days ago, a story emerged of a mother who had been given a suspended jail sentence after she had seriously neglected her three children, and her dogs, because she had become obsessed with an online computer game called Small Worlds.

But picking up agency copy without checking the facts for themselves, the Mail and Sun have accused the wrong game of being involved in the case.

The Sun's (now-removed) article said:

A mum let her two dogs starve to death and neglected her three kids after becoming hooked on online game Small World.

The Mail's article by Jaya Narain, which is still online, claimed:

The 33-year-old woman played the Small World game almost non-stop on the internet for months while her children were reduced to eating cold baked beans straight from the tin with their fingers.

Both papers identify Small World, instead of Small Worlds. Small World is not an online game but a board game. It is available on the iPad but not in an online version. And it isn't on Facebook, as the Mail (inevitably) claim. The game's publisher, Days of Wonder, has responded:

In a classic case of “Google Journalism”, erroneous press reports from British newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Sun that implicate Days of Wonder’s Small World board game have spread like wildfire over the internet.

The stories mistakenly blame the Small World board game as the reason a British woman neglected her children and let the family dogs die because she was so addicted to online game play.

We can only assume that the so-called “journalists” mistook Small World, for a similarly named online virtual world.

While unable to spend a few minutes fact-checking to learn that their story could not be possibly true (Small World has no online play – the only digital version is the two player Small World for iPad); they were able to search our website to download graphics of the board game and further smear our name.

They continue:

Days of Wonder categorically states that the Small World board game is not in any way connected to this tragic story and we are asking the papers in question retract their stories.

And a statement from Days of Wonder CEO Eric Hautemont says:

"One wonders if reporters check their sources! The information published on the websites of the Daily Mail and the Sun has spread like wildfire on the Web. The copyrighted images attempting to incriminate our Small World game have circulated from England to Australia and no one bothered to check if this was indeed the right game in question."

He adds:

Days of Wonder is currently considering legal action regarding this misrepresentation of the Small World board game and hopes the newspapers responsible for these defamatory statements will give similar coverage to a retraction.

It seems the Sun have taken note and taken their article down. When will the Mail?

Moreover, this wasn't the only error in the Mail's article. Originally, they had included a screenshot from yet another game, Warhammer, which also wasn't involved in the case.

According the Willard Foxton, Warhammer's lawyers had the image removed from the article yesterday afternoon and received an apology.

When will Days of Wonder receive the same?

(Hat-tip to Dick Mandrake)

Mock Star Game

Another day, another tabloid reporting on some fictional 'fury'.

This time it was the Daily Star and a claim that a video game based on Raoul Moat was being planned, called 'Grand Theft Auto: Rothbury'.


Having seen the mocked-up cover somewhere, the Star seems to have believed it was actually going to be made.

The Star even appears to have a quote from the sister of Moat's ex-girlfriend, who says the game is 'beyond belief'.

Of course it is. So how did 'journalist' Jerry Lawton and the people at the Star even begin to think this was real?

By this afternoon, the Star had hastily removed the story but the folk at MCV had taken this screenshot of it.

Tim Ingham from CVG wonders if the removal of the article was because they realised (finally) it was nonsense, or whether Grand Theft Auto publisher Rockstar Games had had a word.

Another video game accused of murder

The print edition of today's Daily Mail contains a story with the headline 'Video game axe killer'. It reveals how 17 year old James Callaghan went on a rampage which ended with the brutal murder of a 65 year old widow.

Here are some excerpts from the Mail's story:

A schizophrenic teenager killed a grandmother with an axe when he went on a drunken rampage...

After drinking a bottle of vodka, James Callaghan, 17, stormed out of his home in a rage armed with an axe and a long-bladed knife.

He threatened to attack two girls, struck a passer-by on the head with the axe, terrified a cyclist and tried to smash his way into a couple's flat...

After his arrest Callaghan was diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic. He told psychiatrists that for several months he had been hearing voices in his head urging him to kill and had seen a man 'with horns on his head'. He said he began drinking heavily to cope with these visions.

He was known by his friends to be violent after drinking alcohol.

As a six-year-old he had threatened his mother with a kitchen knife...

While a young child Callaghan had been referred to the community psychiatric nurse on three occasions as his mother struggled to control his behaviour.

So a schizophrenic teenager with a history of violence and psychiatric problems gets drunk and goes on the rampage with an axe.

And yet this is the fault of a video game? Oh yes. According to the Mail:

In the hours before the rampage, Callaghan lost three consecutive games of Fifa 2008, playing at home against his younger brother and a friend. He also played the computer game Grand Theft Auto, which sends the player's character on a violent crime spree.

Even the online version of the story, which has a different headline, implies a link between the games and the murder:

Teenager killed widow with axe in drink-fuelled rage after losing a computer game to his brother

And the Mail wasn't the only one to blame the game either:

Yob killed widow after losing computer game (Express)
Crazed teen's game rampage (Sun)
Murder after teen loses video game (Mirror)

Yet neither the BBC, nor the local paper mentions video games, choosing instead to stick to the facts.

On Saturday, the Mail was pinning a murder on Reservoir Dogs. Now this. Why not report crime and mental health issues seriously rather than lazily using a game or film as an easy scapegoat?

And despite the schizophrenia this teenager was suffering from, the majority of people leaving comments on the story want him executed:

Why are we concentrating on this scum who should be turned into manure and spread on fields?
Mozza, Telford, 26/10/2009 18:00

Mail tries to link Cherie Blair to Virginia Tech massacre

The Daily Mail is attacking two of its favourite hate figures - Cherie Blair and video games - in an entirely pathetic story with what appears to have no news value whatsoever.

Cherie Blair and her son join firm linked to violent computer game explains that she and son Nicky have become directors of a company called Magnitude Gaming.

The actual link between the firm and the 'violent computer game' Counter Strike seems very tenuous at best. The Mail explains that the company:

manage[s] semi-professional teams in the growing ‘e-sport’ world...The company has run a team playing the Counter-Strike combat game.

So it's not as if they designed or published the game, but simply run a team playing it (along with many other games, no doubt). Or did. The statement from company secretary Gabriel Moraes says:

‘Magnitude has never been involved with games containing any kind of street violence. We had one game involving soldiers in military combat but it had a rating of 18-plus and was a team game. We stopped involvement with that game some months ago.’

As the Blairs only became directors in February, it's likely there was only a few months overlap.

And then the two journalists who wrote the story, Brendan Carlin and Simon McGee, get to their main point:

There have been claims that perpetrators of massacres in the US and Germany have been fans of the game.

Ah. 'Claims'. How very definitive.

The 'claims' appear to have been made by serial trouble-maker Jack Thompson, who has made a living out of blaming video games for real-life violence. He linked the Virginia Tech shootings by Cho Seung-Hui to the game but failed to understand that:

• Cho didn't own any video games.
• Cho was never seen playing video games by his room-mate.
  
• Cho was a deeply disturbed young man with access to guns.

Thompson has also linked the game to another shooting at Northern Illinois University, where the perpetrator had played the game, but was also a former psychiatric patient who had stopped taking anti-depressant medication.

But back to Cherie and they try to make her sound like a hypocrite because she:

chaired a major inquiry into the growth of knife and gun crime on Britain’s streets which acknowledged the ‘dire consequences on some young people’ of the video games and films they watched.

But that is a very selective bit of cut-and-pasting. Here's the section in full in which that 'dire consequences' quote actually appears:

Finally, the broader cultural context in which young people live – the music they listen to, the films they watch, the video games and sports they play – are important in articulating values, defining what is ‘cool’ and fashionable and legitimising social norms.

Nevertheless, the impact that these cultural factors have on encouraging violence, desensitizing empathy and legitimising anti-social behaviour is contested.

Among the questions communities feel the need to address is why these factors impact with such dire consequences on some young people while others from the same background and subject to these same cultural influences have different aspirations and choose a lifestyle that does not reinforce their social exclusion.

That is the only section of the whole 121-page report which mentions video games - and appears on page 76. And it says any link is 'contested'. It is not a damning conclusion as the Mail tries to suggest.