Recently, the Straits Times called me up asking me about the NTU Stabbing incident in regards to gaming. This was the resulting story.
I was quoted in the story :
Referring to the stabbing incident at Nanyang Technological University last week, Mr Nicolas Khoo, 31, co-founder of the Cybersports and Online Gaming Association, said: ‘Such incidents happen to a minority of gamers…In this incident, there could have been other reasons that led him to do it, so why was gaming blamed?’
Nothing seems to be wrong, except that :
1. They got my name wrong : It’s ‘Nicholas’ and not ‘Nicolas’
2. I believe the reporter who interviewed me, by the name of ‘Winnie’ was not even listed as one of the writers of this story (unless she goes by another name)
3. I gave a more complete and balanced view of the whole incident, only my most extreme view was taken and out of context of what I stated. i.e. I was quoted out of context.
This was a phone interview and in essence what I said was :
- I spoke to a Nanyang Polytechnic lecturer recently and he gave a good analogy : driving. Driving itself, isit bad? So for drunk driving and hit and run incidents, do we then say that driving is bad and people shouldn’t drive?
- I don’t know the full story but so many factors could have lead to this NTU ’stabbing incident’. It might not be fair just to blame the gaming. (Aside : In fact, a lot more seems to meet the eye here.)
- For example, there was this story about a gamer who died ‘after playing DOTA’ a few months back. The thing is, he fainted on his mahjong table the day before, so why was gaming blamed and not mahjong? In fact, there was probably something much more deeper, yeah?
- As an association, our aim is make more positive and meaningful engagements with gamers and one of the things is to get families to understand and engage the gamer better to avoid isolation.
- There are so many gamers out there. If “playing games make you violent” is true, then why do most of the other gamers turn out ok and normal?
Anyways, there was this story about a boy who committed suicide over his CCA. In the same argument, can we say that CCA is bad and to be blamed for that incident? My point to the journalist was, parenting has to do with a lot of it and that’s one of the thing SCOGA is here to do, educate parents on how to engage the gamers in the family and we are conducting a series of workshops at SUNTEC Convention in May this year for that (more info coming).
Here’s a pretty good post on how badly this Straits Times story was written.
March 19th, 2009 at 4:14 am
Hey Nick, sorry to hear about that. I really wonder when journalists will learn that these kind of incidents is what makes bloggers (or anyone in fact) skeptical and wary of mainstream media, and is one of the factors that is causing the decline of newspapers today. I mean if their sources all learn that agreeing to a quote means being taken out of context 9/10 times, very soon the sources will learn to not agree, period.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Hey Nicholas, unfortunately, your experience has happened to countless others before. I think it’s fairly common that MSM look for “sound bites”, not an essay, so the reporters will tend to pick the bits that are “juiciest”.
A friend who was interviewed on TV once said that the interviewee should (a) say something that’s politically friendly, and (b) keep it to one sentence of 10 words or less. (Tweeting might help as practice for the latter!)
March 19th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Agree with Yuhui - the juiciest soundbites are used and to be fair, it’s impossible to include all responses in their entirety.
I had a similar experience once. A few friends and I submitted quotes regarding a school initiative. I was quoted but a mishmash of my friend’s and my words were used. The liberty the media took quite surprised me.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
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March 19th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
@Daryl - yeah… I’m looking to start a blacklist hahaha..
@Yuhui & ssumin - yeah I know. Actually it has happened to me quite a few times before (like half out of the 2-3 dozen media interviews I’ve given), but usually they’re quite harmless imo… but for the gaming bits, it has happened once too many times and usually with very negative slants. After reading Leonard’s story, I felt that I should do something about it. The thing is, they take the ‘juiciest’ bit and totally quote it out of the context in which it was given. Best thing was, the journalist who interviewed me wasn’t even listed as a writer of the story. Is that even legal?
The last time, separate journalist quoted a gamer really badly, until his family also jumped at his alleged comments. When the writer was first confronted, she came back initially with ‘we interviewed the gamer recently, this was his quote’. The gamer said the last time she interviewed him was more than 1.5 years ago. We went on to lodge a complaint to the senior management and this time she came back with ‘oh, it was another person by the same name whom we interviewed’. The thing is, there’s only so many top gamers out there and his name was pretty unique.
@daphne - poor kittenz… haha
March 19th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
It’s quite remarkable such things are still happening.. I wrote about this 4 years ago…
http://jeffyen.blogspot.com/2005/05/straits-times-ethics-committee-issues.html
March 19th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Wow..you should talk to Jase about this. He was misquoted back when he was in the army and he got him into big trouble. Mainstream media is really losing their credibility. Am glad you are making clarifications.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:00 am
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March 24th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
I think I’ve now mastered the art of giving boring interviews to the point that none of my quotes ever make it to print … hee hee.
March 31st, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Alamak..who asked you to give an interview to ST? I could have bet 10 bucks that you’d be misquoted and won! The standard of “official”
journalism in this country is pathetic…