The free London paper, The Metro (owned by the Daily Mail) had a front page story yesterday titled “Gaming leads to surge in rickets”. The free London paper, The Metro (owned by the Daily Mail) appears to have confused reporting what’s going on in the real world with going beyond rational thinking and good journalism for the sake of being “shocking”.

“Video games and social networking sites have been blamed for a shocking rise in cases of rickets in children” cries journalist Ross McGuinness, who I worry may be illiterate. The official press release that talks about the study released earlier this month mentions nothing about video games and nothing about social networks. It simply says, quite a way down the release, that children “tend to stay indoors more these days and play on their computers instead of enjoying the fresh air.”

Which obviously means what was captioned on the Metro Online‘s version of the story: “Some doctors thing [sic] that the rise in cases of rickets is due to children spending too much time indoors playing video games.”

Thankfully McGuinness uses his fair and balanced approach to journalism and got a quote from Richard Wilson (I assume the TIGA CEO rather than the actor who played Victor Meldrew, though he doesn’t specify), who is apparently the single spokes-person for the entire gaming industry.  Wilson essentially says McGuinness is being dumb and says lumping this problem on video games is “completely wrong”.

In a press release issued in response to the article, Wilson elaborates that “it is ludicrous to blame video games for this medical problem. Any activity or habit that prevents children or adults from getting sufficient exposure to sunlight could be blamed: for example, reading books or watching television.”

Oh if only Diana were here.

Update: Tom Watson MP spoke to the doctor in charge of the study who called the article in the Metro “a classic piece of dodgy lazy journalism”.

Via: BritishGaming