"The program host put a few oddball spins on the event—such as repeatedly stressing that Cleopatra and the Society of Architects was a game for women and mentioning Battleship as everyone’s idea of a wargame.”

This may be kind of amusing to us, but it illustrates how easily journalists can so radically misinterpret a story.  If they can’t get some simple facts about games correct, why should we trust them when it comes to news of economics, foreign affairs, or medicine?

Well, to be fair, Jonathan, this was a fluff piece about a subject that very few journalists have any knowledge about.  While a bit of research certainly would have been nice, it’s probably true that information about economics, foreign affairs, and medicine would be much more readily available to them than data about games.  Still kinda hard to reconcile the Battleship comment, though (although it may not have been made entirely seriously).

I don’t want to steer this conversation too far from games and into journalism generally.  It has, however, long been my observation that when I read a news story on a subject I know little about, the article seems reasonable and well informed.  When I read a story on a subject I know a lot about, I am consistently amazed at how ill-informed, naive, and/or biased the reporting is.  This is true not just for fluffy stories about hobbies, but for substantive ones on business as well.  It is true not just for local TV news, but for major metropolitan papers such as the LA Times and NY Times.

Having been at the taping (and actually appearing on the TV), it was fairly clear that the “news guy” had no idea what he was doing… His job is to find some human interest story to cover for 15-20 minutes EACH AND EVERY weekday morning.

I think the whole thing about Cleopatra came down to the fact that he wanted some kind of 2 minute segment on wargames, kids games, games for women, etc…

In his mind, Cleopatra was going to be the women’s game.  There really wasn’t a lot of time to try to change his mind as taping was done live without much time to do anything but set up the next shot.  And frankly, if it works to somehow convince more people to give gaming a try, i don’t have any problem with the mis-representation.

Given the niche status of our hobby, any exposure that doesn’t show us to be geeky or fringe is good exposure!

dale

Didn’t really finish my thought…

“Having been at the taping (and actually appearing on the TV), it was fairly clear that the “news guy” had no idea what he was doing… His job is to find some human interest story to cover for 15-20 minutes EACH AND EVERY weekday morning.”

As such, it’s not really reasonable to expect him to know a lot about any given topic.  He just needs to know enough to talk about it in 90 second segments and make it interesting to TV viewers.

I got the impression that his MO was to talk to bystanders in the 7-8 minutes between shots and glean enough information out of the bystanders to fill his 90 seconds of airtime.

He was very good at it though, able to remember details about games with only minimal conversation as well as being able to remember our names and correct pronounciation without any sort of cue card or reminder device.

Dale

Yes, I was very impressed with Johnny’s abilities.  I doubt I could do his job.

Having been a journalist for many years, I can attest that the job is 90% faking it. But daily journalism, whether print or broadcast, isn’t really about conveying reality; it’s about giving the viewer or reader the feeling of omniscience, however illusory. The CABS broadcast accomplished this goal by letting the viewing public know there are wacky people out there playing esoteric games. Despite what they say in journalism school, the telling of the story is more important than the facts.

Putting together some of the last few comments, we could infer…

1) The journalist was probably underprepared and had too little time to properly research his subject, but this was the nature of the assignment.

2) He was probably very good at doing his job.

3) His job was probably not to convey something truthful, but rather to tell an interesting story with incomplete facts.

4) His job was probably not to gather facts and to tell a story that wove them together.  His job was apparently to come to the event with a preconceived notion of what the story would be, and then to find facts that would support the story.

I leave it to the reader to extrapolate how this may affect coverage concerning the presidential primaries, the economy, the crisis in the mortgage industry (where I work), and the war in Iraq.

FYI, if anyone is interested, I did make a geeklist with all the games talked about in the 18 minutes

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/28432/

Dale

Jonathan,

You got it right. That’s why I left journalism and became an artist. It’s a more truthful profession.

Roger