Fox News Finally Responds To EA Concerning Mass Effect Sex Debacle
By William on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 12:09 PM PST In Electronic Arts, Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Microsoft, Microsoft
Before I go into the details of Fox’s response, I wanted to make sure all of you have kept up with this week’s drama between EA and Fox News. I’m not going to repeat all of that, so here are the links if you happened to miss what has been going on:
Mass Effect Misinformation Et Tu Fox
Gamers Strike Back Against Cooper Lawrence On Amazon
EA Requests Fox News Correct Errors And Misstatements
EA Plans To Fight Back After Fox Ignores Their Demands For Mass Effect Correction
It took Fox News long enough and they have finally responded to EA. Unfortunately, their response is not adequate. According to Kotaku, their response to their inquiries follows:
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.
Unfortunately, Fox apparently doesn’t get the point that they are liable for what transpired during their trashing of Mass Effect. Perhaps we’ll hear more about this soon, but I don’t blame EA for not responding to that. Why would Electronic Arts want to take part in another Mass Effect trashing on Fox News? Fox certainly owes EA and gamers in general a complete retraction of their Se”Xbox” spot. It’s one thing to give out negative criticism of a game. It’s an entirely different thing when they spread complete lies about the title. Hopefully, EA will not back down when it comes to this. Perhaps Fox News should rethink the “Fair And Balanced” slogan.
Via Kotaku
That’s not even a response, that is Fox backing into their hole even deeper trying to hide. Does this resemble a animal that is scared of what may lay outside their door step?
~Death Dream~
Electronic Arts should sue them for all the lies and bad publicity they gave the game and the video gaming industry itself.
On the contrary, I think, giving EA the floor is the most fair and balanced course of action. You can’t technically “retract” something that is essentially just panelists discussing something. The opinions of the panelists don’t represent the views of fox news. And the segment title “Se’Xbox” while sensationalistic isn’t exactly inaccurate. The game in questions DOES feature a sex scene albeit a short one.
The best thing to do is let EA send a representative to set the recored straight.
I hope EA does just that.
True, they probably can’t retract the panel discussions, since they are opinions. But the host of the show did offer up the “digital frontal nudity” as news, which is simply not true. Still, I do hope EA goes on the show to at least discuss video games in general; even if it may be a setup like the last report on Mass Effect.
Looks like Fox had no clue what it was doing when it opened up this can of worms. Don’t spread lies about games because gamers know how to make your life miserable.
@Jonathan,
The quote was “full digital nudity”, not “digital FRONTAL nudity”. Lets be clear.
And they immediately followed that by saying the game was rated M and then read a written response from Microsoft.
That first quote is certainly open to some interpretation as to what “full” is.
I don’t think you can expect them to retract something that is open to interpretation.
Thats why EA needs to go on, to explain the subtle inaccuracies and misconceptions.
I want Microsoft to put there hand in the hot pot too
FOXNews’ Live Desk misrepresented the game in summary, and got basic facts about it wrong (marketed to kids, rating on the back cover, full nudity). You cannot have a valid discussion when the debate is over a bunch of lies. FOXNews needs to issue a retraction/correction, end of story.
@kevin,
Fox stated that “Critics claim the game is marketed to kids”. Thats true.
“full digital nudity” is an interpretation. If someone in the game is “fully nude” or with no clothes, one could argue the game has full nudity whether they show every body part or not.
As for the back cover, in the US you DO have to look at the back cover for an explanation of the rating. The front only has a picture of the rating letter.
The more I read comments on this, the more its clear people aren’t even angry about the right things and have the facts of the situation just as mixed up as the people on Fox did.
to be honest, it wasn’t much of a panel discussion with the title SexBox. It was also an obvious ambush for the one single person they had on there in support of the game. If you notice, he couldn’t get a word in.
I think Fox certainly can retract statements made on the show. It’s not like a situation where you are interviewing people for their opinions. This was setup to ambush gaming.
I’ll give you the ambush. I hate when “news” shows do that. But seriously, what would you have them retract besides the “full” digital nudity part which is pretty open to interpretation? Would you have them retract statements made by panelists? That would be unprecedented.
I think fox should air a full apology to the creators of Mass Effect. They should admit that all they said was a ton of lies. They need to set the record straight.
If not, then they are not a credible news station, and no one should watch it