The drama continues, and nobody can post comments on Amazon anymore

Jan 25, 2008 09:01 GMT  ·  By

To keep it as short as possible, here is what happened in the past few days: Fox News had an outrageous (both for the gamers, who knew what they were talking about, as well as the parents, who probably had no idea) material about Mass Effect, which was described as "Luke Skywalker meets 'Debbie Does Dallas'" and claimed that the game showed "full digital nudity and sex". It didn't last long and gamers started to spam Cooper Lawrence's book on the Amazon.com with negative comments, one star rating and edited pictures - all making fun of her, to say the right thing. Since then, Amazon.com has deleted the user images and turned off the option to comment on Cooper's book. In the meantime, EA issued a letter and called out the news network on its insulting inaccuracies regarding Mass Effect, concluding, though, that it was not a legal threat, but an appeal to Fox News' sense of fairness. And it seems that such a sense does not exist (at least not in a way EA and the gamer community who has played Mass Effect would like it).

So, after all this madness, Fox News issued a response via an unnamed spokesperson, according to MTV News: "Fox News Channel has extended several invitations to EA through a company representative to appear on 'Live Desk With Martha MacCallum' to discuss 'Mass Effect' and the segment which aired on Monday. We have received no response."

What does this mean? - I ask myself and I will probably get no answer. If you get no response from somebody, you automatically get the right to talk about that somebody without knowing what you're saying? Is it EA's fault for not accepting the invitation to defend its title? Does this allow you to be ignorant and commit the greatest crime a journalist can do: lose your sense of fairness and deliver to the audiences plain, simple lies? Of course not and Fox News should know that. People do make mistakes, it's not that big deal, as long as you admit them and you say "I'm sorry".