From the Editor: On Disclosure, Game Journalism and Criticism of Sources

With the recent announcement from the FTC regarding blogging and disclosure, I found this to be the perfect opportunity to write about something I feel and have felt rather strongly about for the past few years. Disclosure and trust in game journalism.

I believe disclosure to be an important aspect of journalism and as such try to have a clear disclosure policy for The MMO Gamer, something I will go into more later in this editorial as well as present some ways in which we will improve and add to the policy. I am of the opinion that it is not up to journalists individually or media outlets as a whole to decide whether or not they are being biased or unbiased, or if their objectivity is in question.

That decision is up to the readers and as such, I expect our readers to question us and what we write and how we write. Just as I expect our readers to question other media outlets. Disclosure is a method to provide readers with the information they need to make this decision, to take into account how a media outlet works to determine whether or not the articles they write should be considered biased or not. Criticism of the source.

Criticism of the source is something that has been drilled into me since early childhood; Swedish schools bring this up very early. That’s why The MMO Gamer has had a pretty clear (for staff writers) disclosure policy:

• Disclose food or beverages paid for by publishers. We have tried to disclose these events whenever such a situation has presented itself where someone from the industry actively paid for food or beverages specifically for one of our writers. On the other hand we have not mentioned this if the writer has attended a party hosted by a publisher.
• Disclose travel and hotel expenses paid for by publishers. The reason you may not have seen these disclosures is because, to date, we have never accepted paid trips. We have attended events and visited offices, but have not felt the it necessary to do so, even if we could “get away with it” by disclosing it.

This disclosure policy is not in place to appease the FTC; The MMO Gamer is based out of Sweden and probably doesn’t fall under the Commission’s jurisdiction. Are we traditional media on the web, or are we bloggers? I can’t really tell; the difference in definition between game journalist and game blogger are very vague at best. I’m not even sure what the definition of either might be. With The MMO Gamer however I aspire for a high standard, as a professional media organization. We have this policy because we feel them to be necessary for us to be confident in our readers’ trust in us.

But because of the FTC announcement the discussion has been brought up and I feel that this is a good time to amend our policy with another point:

• Disclose the nature of the review copy/account. This is probably the point that readers will see the most of here as starting now, we will disclose whether or not a game being reviewed is done so on a copy or account of the game provided by the publisher/PR or purchased by The MMO Gamer.

I think that stricter disclosure policies are important for the continued maturing of game journalism. I mentioned above that disclosure provides our readers with the information they need, I think, to be able to look at a source critically and determine its credibility. So I will end this short editorial with a question to our readers, what do you, as our readers, think is important for us to disclose?

Topics surrounding game journalism interest me quite a bit and I would love to hear what you, as readers, editors and writers think. Drop a comment here to get the discussion started or drop me a line at siam@mmogamer.com.