Apologize to #GamerGate and gamers in general for their bias and lies in their "What It Feels Like to Be a Gamergate Target" report.
Apologize to #GamerGate and gamers in general for their bias and lies in their "What It Feels Like to Be a Gamergate Target" report.
The Issue
For a while now the media has been condemning #gamergate as a white male misogynists movement with no proof. So it is shocking that a major conglomerate like ABC would do a story with such disregard for journalistic ethics. It fairly obvious after you watch that they didn't cover both sides of the story, didn't thoroughly research Anita Sarkeesian and games or gamers in general, etc. It almost comes off as a propaganda piece against gaming in general. The first words of the report sets the pace for the whole piece, "Depictions of women being beaten and raped and being run over by cars. It's not the movies, it's video games."
"What It Feels Like to Be a Gamergate Target"
The lies and misinformation in this are too many to list so here are some of the major ones
- Claim that you only kill female hookers in GTA V when the majority of people you kill are men. Also they claimed the same thing in Watch Dogs when the victims are randomly generated and can either be male or female. It should be noted that they did not say that if you do that the police come after you. There are repercussions for doing that in the game.
- While it has been confirmed that Anita has had death threats (mostly from trolls who neither support gamergate or the anti-gamergate movement) The event in Utah that she cancelled was not due to threats according to the police department "After a careful assessment of the threat it has been determined it is similar to other threats that Sarkeesian has received in the past, and all university business will be conducted as scheduled tomorrow.” instead she cancelled just to garner sympathy.
- Anita claims (at around the 1:30 mark in the video) "women shouldn't be mere disposable objects." without being challenged. If the ABC reporters thoroughly researched gaming history they would know that what she said was not true as there have been plenty of strong female role models throughout the history of gaming including Samus from Metroid, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, etc. (There are other quotes from on her about video games from the video all equally as false)
- They characterize all people in gamergate as "Boys in a basement". Once again this was a statistic that was completely arbitrary on ABC's part. Not accounting that there are as many women speaking out as men.
- They compare apples and oranges with their statistics. They say about as many women play video games as teenage boys which is a convenient stat since they take men out of it all together. The rest of the report they keep saying that half of gamers are women even though by their own information it is just 36%.
- In the report Brianna Wu claimed that she was driven from her house but the report was shot inside her home.
- Tim Schafer claims there are no girl friendly games when there are literally thousands to choose from. Once again if ABC was competent they would know that.
Once again just a few examples but ABC is also sexist. Don't believe me? About ten years earlier ABC News interviewed Jack Thompson about the same thing. However they treated him much differently. The reporters challenged him with facts and various statistics something they did not do for Anita because she is a woman. You can see and example of it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMWEg-DdUDg
Needless to say the report has not gone well for ABC so far with more than 20,000 dislikes at this time and many video responses proving ABC's horrendous reporting. However ABC went way too far when they removed comments that got too many like that made them look bad. You can see those here:
It's about time we stop this new wave of Yellow Journalism by taking a stand. Please share this so we can make mainstream news organizations accountable for their actions. Thank you.

The Issue
For a while now the media has been condemning #gamergate as a white male misogynists movement with no proof. So it is shocking that a major conglomerate like ABC would do a story with such disregard for journalistic ethics. It fairly obvious after you watch that they didn't cover both sides of the story, didn't thoroughly research Anita Sarkeesian and games or gamers in general, etc. It almost comes off as a propaganda piece against gaming in general. The first words of the report sets the pace for the whole piece, "Depictions of women being beaten and raped and being run over by cars. It's not the movies, it's video games."
"What It Feels Like to Be a Gamergate Target"
The lies and misinformation in this are too many to list so here are some of the major ones
- Claim that you only kill female hookers in GTA V when the majority of people you kill are men. Also they claimed the same thing in Watch Dogs when the victims are randomly generated and can either be male or female. It should be noted that they did not say that if you do that the police come after you. There are repercussions for doing that in the game.
- While it has been confirmed that Anita has had death threats (mostly from trolls who neither support gamergate or the anti-gamergate movement) The event in Utah that she cancelled was not due to threats according to the police department "After a careful assessment of the threat it has been determined it is similar to other threats that Sarkeesian has received in the past, and all university business will be conducted as scheduled tomorrow.” instead she cancelled just to garner sympathy.
- Anita claims (at around the 1:30 mark in the video) "women shouldn't be mere disposable objects." without being challenged. If the ABC reporters thoroughly researched gaming history they would know that what she said was not true as there have been plenty of strong female role models throughout the history of gaming including Samus from Metroid, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, etc. (There are other quotes from on her about video games from the video all equally as false)
- They characterize all people in gamergate as "Boys in a basement". Once again this was a statistic that was completely arbitrary on ABC's part. Not accounting that there are as many women speaking out as men.
- They compare apples and oranges with their statistics. They say about as many women play video games as teenage boys which is a convenient stat since they take men out of it all together. The rest of the report they keep saying that half of gamers are women even though by their own information it is just 36%.
- In the report Brianna Wu claimed that she was driven from her house but the report was shot inside her home.
- Tim Schafer claims there are no girl friendly games when there are literally thousands to choose from. Once again if ABC was competent they would know that.
Once again just a few examples but ABC is also sexist. Don't believe me? About ten years earlier ABC News interviewed Jack Thompson about the same thing. However they treated him much differently. The reporters challenged him with facts and various statistics something they did not do for Anita because she is a woman. You can see and example of it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMWEg-DdUDg
Needless to say the report has not gone well for ABC so far with more than 20,000 dislikes at this time and many video responses proving ABC's horrendous reporting. However ABC went way too far when they removed comments that got too many like that made them look bad. You can see those here:
It's about time we stop this new wave of Yellow Journalism by taking a stand. Please share this so we can make mainstream news organizations accountable for their actions. Thank you.

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Petition created on January 17, 2015
