This isn’t just happening in the mainstream, either. Independent and alternative media has its own share of problems, from debates about credibility to maneuvering a more heavily-activist-populated space to figuring out how to break fast-moving stories and get them more right than the major media.

And then there’s the whole “journalism vs. the State” thing, which played out exquisitely in Ferguson, Missouri. Journalists were arrested, tear gassed, pushed around by cops – and it was all caught on film. Police State, USA was broadcast to the living rooms of every moderate, middle-class-identifying American, and suddenly we’re actually talking about demilitarizing the police. In public. Not in the C4SS comment thread. It’s magical.

But this has all been playing out (aside from Ferguson) within the space of decades. The signs of economic stress on journalism likely showed up in the early 90s, as computers began to proliferate and people began to stop subscribing to newspapers as much. Cable news’s polarization (again, in the 90s) threw the industry’s pretension toward objectivity into question, as news consumers found the source of media that best soothed their confirmation biases and stuck with them as the “most reliable” source. Independent media has never, by definition, been “objective” in the sense that most journalists mean it, but they’ve had to deal with the pseudoscience and new age spiritual baggage that seemed to attach itself to the indie newspapers in the 60s and just never let go.

So yes, there’s lots to criticize in the media – and lots to criticize from an anarchist perspective – but they’re perennial problems. They’re not going to be solved in an hour, or by one undergrad writing a blog about it.

There is, however, one niche media market that is seemingly undergoing a Pulitzer vs. Hearst-level dustup right now: games journalism. And since it isn’t every day you maybe run into a conflict the likes of which haven’t been seen in a century, that’s what we’re gonna focus on this week.

~*~

First, for the readers, a quick summation of “Gamergate” and why it’s notable.

About two weeks ago, programmer Eron Gjoni posted a long, angry accusation of infidelity against his then-girlfriend, independent developer Zoe Quinn, to a self-hosted WordPress blog. He alleged that she had slept with five other people, including a writer at games blogs Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun, Nathan Grayson, during their relationship. Readers then seemed to infer that Quinn had slept with Grayson in exchange for positive reviews on her just-released indie game, Depression Quest, a notion that Gjoni himself later dispelled:

To be clear, if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and Nathan regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no reason to believe that it was sexual in nature. -Eron Gjoni, August 16, 2014 (edited)

However, it was Quinn’s relationship with Grayson that seemed to set off a firestorm among the video game community, such as it is. Even though Gjoni refuted it, and even though Kotaku Editor-In-Chief Stephen Totilo refuted it, and even though Quinn herself refuted it and talked about why it’s goddamn ridiculous to talk about people’s sex lives like they’re any of your business, and even though Nathan Grayson didn’t write the Kotaku Depression Quest review, people still took this as an opportunity to pile onto Quinn and anyone who seemed to think about defending her, all in the name of protesting corruption in video game journalism.

And so there are two threads here that diverge in spots and converge in others: the thread that ostensibly legitimately cares about integrity in video game journalism, and the thread that sees a “social justice warrior” conspiracy in the video game community (such as it is) and will attack any sign of that. When I jumped in the “gamergate” Twitter hashtag with a snarky comment about “gamer dudebros,” people quickly responded that gamergate actually consisted of a diverse range of people including women and individuals in the LGBT community, all concerned with corruption in games news (which, it turned out as our discussion progressed, still centered on Quinn). My experience in the tag did seem to be an outlier, however; as I was asking questions of my small, adversarial, yet seemingly amiable audience, friends of mine were receiving threats, abuse and harassment from people in the same space. Diverse, indeed.

~*~

After a few hours of going back and forth with a few people in the gamergate tag who seemed willing to engage my questions about the role of media in their community, I emerged with new understanding of some key points:

1. There desperately needs to be a giant, year-long (longer if need be) open conversation between game journalists and their consumer base; and
2. Gamergate simply isn’t the foundation for that discussion.

It probably sounds presumptuous of me to say that, but I only do so after considering the material those I talked to gave me, and observing the behavior of many more participants in the tag. Looking purely at the media criticism angle, y’all have some fundamental misunderstandings of how “journalism” works in meatspace – especially within the realm of trade media (we’ll get to it) – versus how it is supposed to ideally function. One person I spoke to wanted both objectivity from the media they were criticizing and “consistency” – their term – in what was covered. When I pointed out that one did not necessarily allow the other, I was told I was being too academic for the discussion.

If the discussion is trying to address endemic problems in the industry, then it’s my view that it should be as academic as possible. If the discussion is trying to provoke a witch hunt against one independent developer (I can’t stress the independent part enough, especially since the ostensible goal is to eliminate corruption) and those who disagree with you about that, then I’m happy to throw my academic stick in your spokes.

Being media literate is a major prerequisite to being able to criticize media well. The screenshots of forum posts, articles posted to deviantart, one person linked me to an article by A Voice for Men, an MRA page – you may consider these things to be evidence supporting your position and damning the conspiracy of social justice warrior commentariat ruining gaming, but to an outsider who, despite poking the tag with a stick initially, attempted to engage in good faith with you, it looks kinda like a mess of conjecture. It also doesn’t add up to a good critique of game journalism. You will need to learn how to cut through chaff and analyze actually important bits of information if your real goal is to end game journalism’s apparent corruption.

Tadhg Kelly at Gamasutra actually put it brilliantly:

And what of the media? Well, frankly, you’re simply out of your mind if you think that the gaming media of yesteryear was somehow more noble than it is today. It used to be way way worse. Back when magazines ruled the roost, for instance, there were plenty of bought reviews in exchange for promised advertising, feature coverage and the like, and far less ways for those stories to get out. You forget that today you have all these networks like Reddit on which you can gather and hear the real skinny. Back then you didn’t, and were duped far more often than now.

Today’s gaming media has never been more active or honest. Through outlets like Giant Bomb, Kotaku, Destructoid, YouTubers and the like a multitude of voices can be heard. The communities that form around them are barely corralled (I mean this as a virtue). The amount of quick analysis, exposure, true feelings about games and the reduction of paid reviews and the like is palpable. The conversation has long stopped being anything like a co-ordinated press organ of previews, reviews and columns and instead become delightfully anarchic. Sure it’s still a bit slushy sometimes (I’m particularly worried about the ethical standards among YouTubers) but still.

You often seem to carry on with this wacky notion that media journalism is a form of reporting similar to news media, talking about how journalists should behave like hard-hitting Woodwards and Bernsteins, but seriously think. A lot of gaming journalism is essentially a benign form of marketing. Coverage of E3, for example, is just video’d enthusiasm and debate over infomercials. The bulk of articles on sites are positivist coverage of new games, and that’s what you actually want to read. It may sound great in principle to have some uncorrupted soul-searing journos on the beat for the truth, but this is video games. There isn’t much truth to be found.

Here’s something important and valuable: trade journalism is not the same – and doesn’t play by the same rules – as “regular” journalism. Publications and websites that devote themselves to a specific niche, or a specific niche-within-a-niche, frequently must form extensive personal and professional relationships with those they cover in order to do their jobs. Additionally, much of the bread-and-butter content of trade media are subjective product reviews, behind-the-scenes features, previews and industry interviews. All of these can be gotten by a so-called “objective” outside journalist, but an interesting thing happens: their story tends not to be as in depth or as tuned into the cultural background noise as the trade journalist’s story is. This is why there’s such a major difference between a convention like E3 and the coverage it generates and a convention like PAX Prime. Both are major events, but one is specifically geared toward outside journalists.

The same kind of phenomenon holds true in other niche markets; in motocross, to use one random example, one of the largest American publications is owned by the same person who heads the management body of the US Motocross Outdoor Nationals. This fact is widely known, but there’s no crusade for an end to the corruption in motocross media. The participants, press and industry all know each other intimately, and while that definitely opens the door wide open for corruption, the work the writers do for publications within that niche tends to be better than work done from the outside.

However, this is not to say that the kind of ethics generally followed by outside press need to be eschewed when you scale down. The Society for Professional Journalists still has the best ethics list around, and as a basic foundation they’re fantastic to refer to in whatever discussion comes out of this.

~*~

I’ve spent most of this article kind of maybe defending the video game press from some of the criticisms it’s faced recently. However, I need to address you directly for a moment.

Most of you already know that you have a responsibility to your readers to work as ethically as you can, and with as little interference from those you cover as possible. I’ve read a lot of editorial staff statements defending your work and I believe you when you say that you’re operating as above-board as humanly possible, and I actually agree that you’re not operating on the same playing field and therefore shouldn’t be expected to play with the same rules as journalists at the New York Times.

But I spend all day studying the media. My blogroll is occupied by Jim Romenesko and Jay Rosen and Margaret Sullivan and NPR’s mysterious ombudsman. I understand what you mean when you say your relationship with advertisers and developers is complex. But your readers, the people whose blogroll is occupied by your websites and then Reddit and 4chan and 9gag and on and on, they may not understand – or worse, they may misunderstand that relationship. This is where you need to spend time clarifying everything. You need to let some sunshine in on your operations so that no one can credibly accuse you of shady dealings again. This has the added bonus of lending some credence to the idea that games journalism is actually becoming more professional.

My advice is to spend 2015 going to conventions and having meetups with readers who have concerns about your ethics and want to understand you better. That’s literally it. You don’t have to have panels or spend money on booths, just go and be available in some capacity to readers who want to know more about how these things work. If you find that too prohibitive, hire an ombudsman.

That’s it, literally. I’ve said everything I wanted to say on this subject. If you’ve got questions or comments, as always, feel free to leave them for me to answer (or not) below. You can follow us at @missingcomma and @c4ssdotorg on Twitter. I’m available there at @illicitpopsicle and Juliana is @julianatweets0. See you next week.

But this campaign is illustrative for another reason. Facebook is under fire not just for permitting misogynistic speech that condones violence, but for banning speech far more innocuous. As Soraya Chemaly, Jaclyn Friedman and Lauren Bates explain in their open letter to the company:

These [misogynistic] pages and images are approved by your moderators, while you regularly remove content such as pictures of women breastfeeding, women post-mastectomy and artistic representations of women’s bodies. In addition, women’s political speech, involving the use of their bodies in non-sexualized ways for protest, is regularly banned as pornographic, while pornographic content — prohibited by your own guidelines — remains. It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women’s bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women’s nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse. Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.

This is truly a vile double standard. It treats women’s bodies as more offensive than violence against women. It treats rape and domestic violence as less objectionable than women breastfeeding.

What we should keep in mind, however, is that this double standard did not start with Facebook. The same double standard has been promoted for more than a century as part of US law. One of the few exceptions to the First Amendment that the US government recognizes is an exception for “obscenity.” The US government claims the power to prosecute and incarcerate people for speech and expression it deems legally “obscene.”  Historically this has meant targeting sexual expression.

In 1873, Anthony Comstock convinced Congress to pass the Comstock Law, banning “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” content from the mails. Moses Harman, publisher of anarchist feminist journal Lucifer the Lightbearer, was jailed multiple times under Comstock’s reign, because his periodical featured “obscene” advocacy of birth control and free love. Margaret Sanger was similarly charged with obscenity for distributing information about contraception. The Comstock Law was used to punish practically anyone who sent information about contraception or criticism of marital rape through the post.

Obscenity law has changed a lot since the days of the Comstock. In 1973, in Miller v. California, the Supreme Court affirmed that “Obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment” but narrowed the definition of obscenity, defining speech as obscene based on the following criteria:

(a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

“Prurient interest” refers to sexual arousal. So the US government claims the power to use force and violence to censor speech based on it being sexually arousing, “offensive,” and lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”  This provides justification for the US government to censor completely non-violent pictures of naked bodies. As John Stoltenberg writes, “obscenity laws are constructed on the presumption that it is women’s bodies that are dirty, that women’s bodies are the filth.”

Based on the Miller test, US courts have also ruled that government censorship of sexist material is unconstitutional. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon’s Civil Rights Antipornography Ordinance was ruled unconstitutional in part because “The Indianapolis ordinance does not refer to the prurient interest, to offensiveness, or to the standards of the community.” Instead, the statute referenced objectification of women, degradation of women, and portrayal of violence against women.

The American legal system believes that the state has more legitimate interest in stopping people from being sexually aroused than in countering sexism or violence. Don’t you think those are bizarre priorities?

As a matter of principle, the state should have no power to censor. Furthermore, the state’s backwards priorities present a good argument for its abolition. In addition to abolishing the state, we should seek to stop its toxic and bigoted standards from defining the privately run social media spaces we use.

US Representative Todd Akin (R-MO) made headlines over the weekend for his scientifically inaccurate and misogynist description of how women’s bodies deal with pregnancies conceived through rape.

Akin was a guest on St. Louis-based KTVI-TV’s Sunday morning talk show “the Jaco Report.” The host, Charles Jaco, asked, “If an abortion could be considered in the case of tubal pregnancy or something like that, what about in the case of rape, should it be legal or not?”

“Well you know, uh, people always want to try and make that as one of those things — well, how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question,” Akin said. “It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

Once the story broke, Akin released a statement saying that he misspoke. While many, including GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have called for him to drop out of the upcoming Senate race against incumbent Claire McCaskill (D-MO), others, like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, are standing behind him. Akin announced on Tuesday that he would not be dropping from the race.

During Akin’s time in the House, as a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, he co-sponsored a bill with current vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan that sought to, among other things, change the definition of rape to “forcible rape.”

32,000 women get pregnant from rape per year, according to a 1996 study by gynecologist Dr. Melisa Holmes. Additionally, women do not have biological mechanisms that kick in and abort a potential pregnancy when they suffer rape-related trauma. Finally, and most importantly: There is no such thing as “legitimate” or “illegitimate” rape. That kind of dichotomy is disgusting; implying that some victims are being untruthful when they come forward is so fundamentally misogynist that it boggles the mind.

However, it isn’t really surprising that Akin — a stereotypical religious conservative with a history of trying to legislate female reproductive rights out of existence — believes these things. He is a logical product of a state that not only incorporates patriarchy into its legal framework, but its social and cultural institutions as well.

Akin is the product of a system that promotes the false idea that women need men just to exist, that women should only ever be concerned with having and raising children and keeping the home clean; a system that looks with disgust upon women who seek to live and work and play independently of it. It is a system that permeates all aspects of all our lives. Akin — and many others, both in and outside the insulated sphere of electoral politics — not only accept this system but rush headlong to meet it, and as such, it is understandable (though by no means acceptable) that this occurred in the first place.

It’s easy to dismiss or mock Akin as “just another misogynist Republican” (and to be clear, he is one) and be done with the whole affair, but it is perhaps more useful and productive — especially as anarchists — to approach this situation and its aftermath with the intent of opening a frank and visible discussion about patriarchy and oppression. Patriarchy infects everyone under it as it endeavours to perpetuate itself. We are not immune to it, even though we recognize that it is a coercive societal force, and if all we do is point and laugh, we have helped patriarchy along.

There is a vibrant and productive current of anarchist feminism that exists today. We (speaking as a straight, cisgender, white male to my straight, cisgender, white male comrades) need to listen to this current. We need to heed what they have been trying to tell us for years. We need to start shutting down the disappointing trend of “manarchism” that has popped up in recent years and work with anarcha-feminists to popularize and spread ideas of a world without the State, a world built upon voluntary free association and mutual aid and the idea that all persons are equal — not just dudes.