Editor’s Letter is a series of ongoing articles on the state of PSLS, its future and the future of the industry as a whole.
Over the years, I’ve become pretty used to sites lacking any sort of moral compass and simply pumping out shoddy trash, but it still hurts me every time I see it – especially when it’s from a respected national outlet.
Today CNN sunk to a shocking low, with the same writer publishing these two articles on the same day – ‘5 reasons the Playstation 4 will crush the competition’ and ‘5 reasons the Xbox One will dominate’. The same writer on the same day.
I’m not even going to bother talking about how both articles are poorly written, needlessly split across multiple pages to force you to click again and again, that he writes Playstation not PlayStation, and that he thinks there are games called Killzone War Zone and Octodad: Deadliest Catch.
Instead, I’m going to talk about what’s wrong with the same writer on the same publication writing these two articles. Each one is created to troll the audience and rile them up by saying something sensationalist, with the writer declaring a victor in each article, successfully stirring the pot in both camps. The PS4 ‘will crush’, the Xbox One ‘will dominate’… these are not articles about how either console could completely win (which is impossible anyway), but singular irrefutable statements of fact – that refute each other.
Worse still, each article is essentially a copy/paste of the other, opening the same, borrowing the same phrases.
These are posts purposely designed to get people angry and clicking, which is more commonly known as flamebait. There is no respect for the readers, they are a means to a click-filled end, idiots conned into reading awful articles that are completely misleading. It’s disgusting, shameful and a poor excuse for journalism.
This is a writer and a publication that is straddling both sides of an argument, without offering balance, just flip flopping for traffic. There are genuine reasons to believe one console may lead another (not crush), but CNN have managed to pretend both sides will ‘dominate’ the other.
If you’re going to write misspelled, factually incorrect, one-sided garbage, at least stand by your misspelled, factually incorrect, one-sided opinion and don’t contradict yourself on the same day.
