robur said:
Vault Dweller said:
A question!
Let's say that I'm having a conversation with a game developer and he tells me something mind blowing. Some info about the company's unofficial motto and design philosophy or some info about publishers fucking a game in development up.
As a gaming journalist, what is the right - professionally - course of action? To say nothing to my audience and thus fail to provide critical info that people should know or to make the info public, which would fulfill my duty as a journalist but would breach someone's trust.
I'm genuinely curious what everyone thinks.
...
That said, I would make this broader as it's a question about journalism, heck, people's communication in general. I would ask myself: Does the audience benefit from the information right away? Or can it serve me into building a bigger story? Sometimes journalists research for months and months before publishing a multi page feature that cause some serious trouble to the people involved. If I wasn't preparing such a feature, I'd at least ask the developer if that stuff he told me was factual - and if it was, if there would be any lifes at stake if those facts got laid open. Providing they would be genuinely interesting and new, not just cementing an already known fact, e.g. "game development is expensive", "new consoles are hard to develop for", "this game tanked because ...". See, maybe he is preparing a Postmortem for Game Developer or a similar mag himself using those things he told you as bullet points - why would I steal his own story? Bottom line: I would treat him with the same respect I wanted to get treated with. Because I believe in business relationships based on trust, not fear and desception.
@VD I don’t know how I missed it, but I did, better late then never and all that.
I see this as – the bigger or the more important (what ever it is) that piece of information is, the more important is to somehow get some kind of conformation on this information from somewhere else, even if comes from a very reliable source, the benefits of a second source conformation is two fold, first it mean you don't have to betray trust in order to share that information with your readers, secondly one of the thing you got to be wary of (among many other things) is being manipulated by some disgruntled employee whether intentionally or not, what you are getting may be post-processed filtered information or a conclusion as the employee see it, deducted from information you don’t have access to, that employee my present his conclusion in good faith as some kind of factual information, hell it can be just someone venting off (especially in case the confidential information isn’t 'supposed' to become publicly available from the source point of view), painting a picture a lot worse that it actually is in order to get some sympathy, and these are just a few example cases from a wide reange of possibilities.
Additionally, posting rumors as news ("there are some rumors circulating lately ..." and likewise) is the
least happy medium, it should be reserved as the absolute last resort, that is not being honest to everyone, not to your readers, not toward the developer, and it certainly doesn't help your credibility, only post something you are prepared to stand behind it, for better or worse.
If you really can't convince the game dev to give you his permission to use that information (making him an anonymous source)
AND you really think that this information should be available to your readers
AND you have gone to every possible reasonable effort to obtain that information from another source and that includes proper old fashion research
AND you have exhausted every other possibility you can think of, then you ponder, you agonies but most importantly
you consult, this is where experience comes into play and not just yours but your editor's (and your peers), that is your first address in situation like these. Sometimes it is hard to tell just how much, exactly, your personal opinion has an impact on your decision, if you dislike the company/person involved how can you measure your personal taint against them, you don’t want to be someone that is motivated by his thirst of blood, on the other hand if you sympathize with the company/person involved how can you measure your personal bias towards it, you don’t want to be someone that is motivated by his personal preferences.
One very important point; you always give your 'source' the opportunity to convince you not to go public with the information he gave you, ALWAYS! You owe him that, if it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t have that information to begin with, and it doesn't stop there, you have to respect his arguments no matter how much they are stupid, self-serving or narrow sighted, respect him and his arguments just like he respected you by brining that information to your doorstep. Make sure he understand your reasons, give him a chance to convince you otherwise and respect his arguments like they where yours if you where in his shoes. If you still think, after all that, you should go public with that information, in that final moment, where you are stuck between a hammer and a hard place, that is where professionalism kicks in, what makes you a professional, a real professional, is the ability to make that call.
robur said:
apologies about not answering the questions in the other threads yet, week has been very crazy writing and making E3 appointments and dealing with other random stuff ... but no complaints, I will get to them before I fly down to Santa Monica.
If that includes my Qs in there, by all means, take your time.
Just a thought.
