Every time I go onto Kotaku and see something to do with the British Media, I cringe. I’m not joking; my face is already contorted as soon as I see the words. At least this time it’s justified. And majorly so.

The site ‘StarNow’, essentially an online job-application-fest, has an advertisement for people to “Write a few lines about how computer games turned you to crime”, and if they like what you write, they’ll call you back, negotiate a price, and you sell your story etc etc. However, as has been pointed out by Kotaku, there is no need for the story to be true. All that is needed is that ‘they like it’. And what’s worse, is if you do not let them use YOU as the source of the article, since you wrote the outline and submitted it without any sort of copyright/licence, they can use it without paying the submitter a penny. Doesn’t that suck hard?

And since they stated it’s a ‘National’ Newspaper, I have to say that it’s one of the following as the culprits, or one of their go-betweens:

• The Sun
• The Daily Mirror
• The Daily Sport
• Daily Star
• The Daily Telegraph
• The Times
• The Independant
• The Daily Mail
• Daily Express

I’ve probably missed a few, but, minus the Indy and the Telegraph, I wouldn’t put it past any of these papers to publish it, although I will admit I’m looking more closely at the top four, since they are tabloids, and as such have a major thing for sensationalising a topic.

Have a shot yourself, if you want.

Via Kotaku

Tags: kotaku, british press, newspaper, sensationalism, fraud, video game violence, crime