CounterIntelligent
Reuters, the DoD, and a Tall Tale
Okay, here's the story:
SonicJihad's Video
So apparently this little fan machinima dressed up with some political satire sits on the web for six months...
And then some DoD contractors get ahold of it, and present it to Congress...
Without doing any investigation or fact-checking... Islamists Using US Video Games in Youth Appeal Apparently David Morgan didn't check his facts before writing the article either. The story was run by Reuters and picked up by agencies such as Yahoo!, The Washington Post, ZDnet,and good old Fair and Balanced. A search of Reuters today did not return the article at first (I had to find a direct link from a different article), and the only rebuttal paired directly with the article was reader feedback at ZDnet. SonicJihad's conversation with fellow BF2 players regarding the video can be found here.
While it would be incorrect to lay the blame for the snafu at the feet of Reuters, Morgan should have checked his facts, and his editors should have as well. It seems that the hearing was carried out as described, and another site covering this situation has the transcripts to prove it. The discussion of the video in question is in part one of the transcript, and starts on the middle of page 8, and is directly referred to infrequently from there. Now, there is a story here, and it isn't necessarily just the incompetence of the reporter: it's about the complete and utter waste of taxpayer dollars, and what our agencies are paying attention to when they're looking for online terrorists. That's the big story, Morgan is a small fish.
Gamepolitics did an interview with the gamer in question, and it is a very good read. All of the news agencies listed above continue to display the article, with no follow-up, changes, or retraction. This German article does appear to mention the incredible mistake towards the end of the piece (I used Google's translate function to read it). A French gaming site has picked up the story with a sense of humor (although they seem to misrepresent Team America: World Police, but that may be due to translation). Opposable Thumbs has some good commentary on this issue. G4 covered it in "The Feed" (look for May 9th entries if the link doesn't take you directly to it).
My god.
Okay, here's the story:
SonicJihad's Video
So apparently this little fan machinima dressed up with some political satire sits on the web for six months...
And then some DoD contractors get ahold of it, and present it to Congress...
Without doing any investigation or fact-checking... Islamists Using US Video Games in Youth Appeal Apparently David Morgan didn't check his facts before writing the article either. The story was run by Reuters and picked up by agencies such as Yahoo!, The Washington Post, ZDnet,and good old Fair and Balanced. A search of Reuters today did not return the article at first (I had to find a direct link from a different article), and the only rebuttal paired directly with the article was reader feedback at ZDnet. SonicJihad's conversation with fellow BF2 players regarding the video can be found here.
While it would be incorrect to lay the blame for the snafu at the feet of Reuters, Morgan should have checked his facts, and his editors should have as well. It seems that the hearing was carried out as described, and another site covering this situation has the transcripts to prove it. The discussion of the video in question is in part one of the transcript, and starts on the middle of page 8, and is directly referred to infrequently from there. Now, there is a story here, and it isn't necessarily just the incompetence of the reporter: it's about the complete and utter waste of taxpayer dollars, and what our agencies are paying attention to when they're looking for online terrorists. That's the big story, Morgan is a small fish.
Gamepolitics did an interview with the gamer in question, and it is a very good read. All of the news agencies listed above continue to display the article, with no follow-up, changes, or retraction. This German article does appear to mention the incredible mistake towards the end of the piece (I used Google's translate function to read it). A French gaming site has picked up the story with a sense of humor (although they seem to misrepresent Team America: World Police, but that may be due to translation). Opposable Thumbs has some good commentary on this issue. G4 covered it in "The Feed" (look for May 9th entries if the link doesn't take you directly to it).
My god.