Okay, look. I've been following the Gamergate fiasco for some time. Well, actually since the whole thing blew up. I like games. I like some gaming sites. I like other gamers.
I'm not, like many other writers, going to sit here and spit out my gaming credentials here. I should not have to. And neither should anyone else.
I'm also not going to recap the GG story. You can read that here.
So here's my problem. GG has so far only come to be associated with a roving, leaderless band of online people who are spamming advertisers on gaming sites and who are harassing women who are critical of games. They like to insist that it's about journalistic ethics. But the person who was harassed in the catalyst event that led to the very claim wasn't a journalist at all, but a developer.
I just don't get it. You want ethical games journalism, but what the heck does that look like? I'm not being facetious. Is it a game walk through? Is it is a list of technical specs? Is it a neverending twitch stream of people paying to play games and taking no money from anyone while quietly playing without commentary?
Games "journalism" is completely and utterly subjective. Gaming magazines are a series of blogs that are supported by ad revenue, often paid by gaming studios. Most gaming magazines (online or in print) are a series of game reviews. These are, by their very definition, subjective opinion. How do we make that more ethical? Uh, it's an opinion. How is it unethical?
Look, entertainment reporting (and that's what this is, just like ESPN and E! network) relies on a positive relationship with the form of entertainment being reported. ESPN reporters, producers and executives need a working relationship with the sports it covers. Why do you think so many athletes become commentators? Not because they have such a great command of the language or because they know anything about broadcast journalism, it's because they have contacts and an insider's view. Same is true with movie or television reporting: people are usually part of the industry before they become reporters on it. No one is surprised or shocked by this. Well, no one but the people who want to do actual investigative reporting on sports (Ask the guys who made the League of Denial documentary).
In order to write reviews, those in games journalism get advance copies of the game, they get access to new hardware and software so that when the release date hits, we can decide based on someone's review if we like it. A good reviewer acknowledges his preferences in games ("I don't like exploration requirements" or "I love jumping puzzles" for example) and reviews it in that context.
My real point here is this, though: at what point will the GG horde feel like it has won or at least done something? When the current standard gaming sites crumble to dust? Probably won't happen. When women stop saying "hey I kind of like these games, but don't like that I can't play a female avatar"? Also not going to happen.
All I can glean from the pages and pages (and believe me, I've read more than I ever wanted to of GG tweets, 8chan posts and reddits) is that they just want everyone who isn't them to stop playing games and to stop demanding a better, more inclusive product. They are the old white guys in the current GOP asking for why they can't have their country back. (You know the one, where women just cleaned the house, served the drinks and shut the hell up? That same one where blacks knew their place and didn't get uppity. That country. By the way, that country did awesome things like help end 2 world wars and build a powerful economy, and it did some tremendously awful things like eugenics programs, Jim Crow and segregation, institutionalized sexism, internment of Japanese Americans, and the list goes on and on and on.)
I hate to break it to you guys, like it or not, and believe it or not, other people play games, too, now. Jocks, nerds, musicians, brainiacs, dorks, they have all played games at some point. Your mom plays video games, so does your sister and your cousin and your friends and your enemies. Pitching a royal fit will not change that. Claiming that you liked it first and so no one else loves it or understands it like you do doesn't change that other people are open about loving games too, now. Bullying, threatening and harassing women won't stop that. Threatening websites and advertisers will not stop that. It may cause them to rethink their ad dollars, but it won't make them stop making games, it won't make them stop advertising elsewhere and it won't make other people stop hearing about the games you so dearly claim to love and to want to save from the rest of the world.
So where's the end game here? I sincerely want to know. If your goal is to make feminists shut up and go back to the kitchen, it's not going to happen, so at what point does it stop? Do you even know? Do you even care? Or are you just looking for an excuse to cry and whine that while you only got one cookie, someone else got two?
Friday, October 24, 2014
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Infection control
If we're wondering why we're failing at protecting health care staff from Ebola, take a look at this picture:
Check out all of those adorable stethoscope covers. There are patterns you can get, you can make them your own. I even saw a super cute alligator one.
And don't worry, I'm sure every nurse, doctor, medical assistant, and tech takes them off between patients and washes them, right? I mean, they do that, right? (No. They don't. And good hospitals have made it clear that these covers are nothing more than infection magnets, but they are still sold to clinicians in health departments, surgery centers, and clinics across the country.)
Here's the scary part of the game, kids: very few medical staff actually are enforcing good infection control in the average clinic or hospital. Most staff got a quick OSHA training on it and then just do what they're told by their supervisor. We couldn't control infections enough to prevent MRSA from becoming a household name. It's not that medical staff are stupid. It's not that they're malignant. It's that we are complacent. We haven't seen a truly terrifying plague like Ebola in the US since HIV/AIDS. (To be clear, I do not consider Ebola a plague or even an epidemic in the US. I'm comparing it to HIV/AIDS only in the level of fear among US citizens, not in its scope or reach or impact on the actual health of the population.)
It was the HIV epidemic that introduced us to the idea of universal precautions against blood and body fluid exposure in the first place. But then more people were tested, treatments improved, and we realized that the people at risk were generally gay men and injection drug users. So, well, we stopped worrying. Magic Johnson got it and he didn't die, what's the big deal? I mean, does the guy who gives me my flu shot really need to wear latex gloves anymore?
According to a 2010 article in the NY Times, in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated roughly 1.7 million hospital-associated infections, from all types of microorganisms, including bacteria, combined, cause or contribute to 99,000 deaths each year.
The problem here isn't that we don't have the technology or the sophisticated medical care or access to great treatment. It's that we rely entirely on those things, and we have become complacent. I've witnessed in my career numerous blood draws done where the phlebotomist took off his gloves because the patient was "a hard stick" and the vein was hard to feel through the gloves.
I've seen vaccines administered by nurses and medical assistants without gloves where the syringes were then stuck into the table to prevent a needle stick, rather than the clinic paying for the safety needle systems, pictured to the right, that are so readily available. I've accidentally stuck my own finger a few times. Luckily for me, it was only in the stage where I was drawing up the medications I was about to use, and the needle hadn't been used on any one else. I've seen dirty gloves removed in the course of treatment and tossed casually aside on a counter top or even the floor, only to be picked up by cleaning crew or other staff, who were sometimes wearing gloves and sometimes were not. I've seen simple procedures, such as incision and drainage of an abscess or removal of a skin lesion performed without eye protection. And, I'll admit, I'm guilty of that last one.
I'm not saying these things to say that doctors, nurses and medical assistants are lazy or malignant. I'm saying them because we're complacent. But it's not limited to just clinicians. There's an entire community of complacent parents out there who have never seen a case of polio or measles or whooping cough outside of a movie or a historical documentary. Those parents have decided that their non-scientific based fears are more important than some imaginary or historical disease, and refused to vaccinate. And now, the epidemic we should be fearing and working to stop isn't Ebola, but rather measles.
Look, no medical system is perfect. No individual is perfect. But if medical systems (clinics, health departments and hospitals) don't take this opportunity to review their infection control models, don't put into place aggressive hand washing programs and don't take the time to update their processes for dealing with communicable diseases as they present, then this is a lost opportunity that may cost people lives. Those lives won't be lost to Ebola, as the chances of getting Ebola in the US right now is less than the chances of winning the lottery or being struck by lightning. Those lives will be lost to MRSA, to nosocomial infection, to influenza. And that will be the policy fail that is unforgivable, not that a nurse got on a plane or that we allowed a man who had recently traveled to west Africa to leave the ER with symptoms.
 |
| Aren't they cute? Can you imagine the number of bacteria they carry from patient to patient? |
And don't worry, I'm sure every nurse, doctor, medical assistant, and tech takes them off between patients and washes them, right? I mean, they do that, right? (No. They don't. And good hospitals have made it clear that these covers are nothing more than infection magnets, but they are still sold to clinicians in health departments, surgery centers, and clinics across the country.)
Here's the scary part of the game, kids: very few medical staff actually are enforcing good infection control in the average clinic or hospital. Most staff got a quick OSHA training on it and then just do what they're told by their supervisor. We couldn't control infections enough to prevent MRSA from becoming a household name. It's not that medical staff are stupid. It's not that they're malignant. It's that we are complacent. We haven't seen a truly terrifying plague like Ebola in the US since HIV/AIDS. (To be clear, I do not consider Ebola a plague or even an epidemic in the US. I'm comparing it to HIV/AIDS only in the level of fear among US citizens, not in its scope or reach or impact on the actual health of the population.)
It was the HIV epidemic that introduced us to the idea of universal precautions against blood and body fluid exposure in the first place. But then more people were tested, treatments improved, and we realized that the people at risk were generally gay men and injection drug users. So, well, we stopped worrying. Magic Johnson got it and he didn't die, what's the big deal? I mean, does the guy who gives me my flu shot really need to wear latex gloves anymore?
According to a 2010 article in the NY Times, in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated roughly 1.7 million hospital-associated infections, from all types of microorganisms, including bacteria, combined, cause or contribute to 99,000 deaths each year.
The problem here isn't that we don't have the technology or the sophisticated medical care or access to great treatment. It's that we rely entirely on those things, and we have become complacent. I've witnessed in my career numerous blood draws done where the phlebotomist took off his gloves because the patient was "a hard stick" and the vein was hard to feel through the gloves.
I've seen vaccines administered by nurses and medical assistants without gloves where the syringes were then stuck into the table to prevent a needle stick, rather than the clinic paying for the safety needle systems, pictured to the right, that are so readily available. I've accidentally stuck my own finger a few times. Luckily for me, it was only in the stage where I was drawing up the medications I was about to use, and the needle hadn't been used on any one else. I've seen dirty gloves removed in the course of treatment and tossed casually aside on a counter top or even the floor, only to be picked up by cleaning crew or other staff, who were sometimes wearing gloves and sometimes were not. I've seen simple procedures, such as incision and drainage of an abscess or removal of a skin lesion performed without eye protection. And, I'll admit, I'm guilty of that last one.
I'm not saying these things to say that doctors, nurses and medical assistants are lazy or malignant. I'm saying them because we're complacent. But it's not limited to just clinicians. There's an entire community of complacent parents out there who have never seen a case of polio or measles or whooping cough outside of a movie or a historical documentary. Those parents have decided that their non-scientific based fears are more important than some imaginary or historical disease, and refused to vaccinate. And now, the epidemic we should be fearing and working to stop isn't Ebola, but rather measles.
Look, no medical system is perfect. No individual is perfect. But if medical systems (clinics, health departments and hospitals) don't take this opportunity to review their infection control models, don't put into place aggressive hand washing programs and don't take the time to update their processes for dealing with communicable diseases as they present, then this is a lost opportunity that may cost people lives. Those lives won't be lost to Ebola, as the chances of getting Ebola in the US right now is less than the chances of winning the lottery or being struck by lightning. Those lives will be lost to MRSA, to nosocomial infection, to influenza. And that will be the policy fail that is unforgivable, not that a nurse got on a plane or that we allowed a man who had recently traveled to west Africa to leave the ER with symptoms.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Women in Sports
There was an interesting commentary on NPR this morning about women in sports journalism and CBS sports is launching a women's show called "We need to talk" or something like that. It's sort of like The View but for sports.
I think the huge thing most sports broadcasting has missed is this: most women sports fans don't need a "chick sports" show. We just want to see more women doing the journalism, coaching and game announcing. We don't need to have a show (or a channel, for that matter--did you guys know that there's an ESPN-W for women) that just tailors its content to what they think women are. We just want to see really good women journalists have their place at the table.
We only see women on the sidelines asking the coaches what they should do to adjust at halftime (and then are taken to the men in the booth who actually tell us what we already know). We only see women as scantily clad weather girls. Women in sports journalism have come a very long way, baby. But women sports fans don't want to just watch women's sports (we enjoy them, yes, but we also still like watching men's sports) and we want to see other smart women who are fans talk about sports and be part of the process.
ESPN, CBS Sports and other broadcasters need to stop pigeonholing women into a little coffee klatch style show and then congratulating themselves for paying attention to their female fans. Just put the good journalists who are doing good work in places like ESPN-W, a channel that no one really knows about, and put them front and center on ESPN. Have a few women on Inside the NFL. Have a few women on the pre-game show.
Don't shove us into what you think we like. We like football. We like golf and basketball and baseball. I personally love seeing a great defense sack a quarterback. I can appreciate a great Hail Mary, the Music City Miracle, or Russell Wilson's magical, scrambling performance on this week's Monday Night Football this week.
Just include the smart women who are already reporting on the mainstream sports that we already watch in your reporting stable. Don't limit yourself to former athletes only. Don't limit yourself to men only. Women have a voice, their opinions about sports are often well considered and informed. Don't make a big deal out of it, just do the right thing. Don't look to be a pioneer or some sort of ground breaker, just take great talent--no matter what gender it might be--and use it. Stop trying to make us watch something we don't want because it's "targeted at women." Just give us good sports reporting, let us watch great sports, stop assuming all fans are men, and we'll all be fine.
I think the huge thing most sports broadcasting has missed is this: most women sports fans don't need a "chick sports" show. We just want to see more women doing the journalism, coaching and game announcing. We don't need to have a show (or a channel, for that matter--did you guys know that there's an ESPN-W for women) that just tailors its content to what they think women are. We just want to see really good women journalists have their place at the table.
We only see women on the sidelines asking the coaches what they should do to adjust at halftime (and then are taken to the men in the booth who actually tell us what we already know). We only see women as scantily clad weather girls. Women in sports journalism have come a very long way, baby. But women sports fans don't want to just watch women's sports (we enjoy them, yes, but we also still like watching men's sports) and we want to see other smart women who are fans talk about sports and be part of the process.
ESPN, CBS Sports and other broadcasters need to stop pigeonholing women into a little coffee klatch style show and then congratulating themselves for paying attention to their female fans. Just put the good journalists who are doing good work in places like ESPN-W, a channel that no one really knows about, and put them front and center on ESPN. Have a few women on Inside the NFL. Have a few women on the pre-game show.
Don't shove us into what you think we like. We like football. We like golf and basketball and baseball. I personally love seeing a great defense sack a quarterback. I can appreciate a great Hail Mary, the Music City Miracle, or Russell Wilson's magical, scrambling performance on this week's Monday Night Football this week.
Just include the smart women who are already reporting on the mainstream sports that we already watch in your reporting stable. Don't limit yourself to former athletes only. Don't limit yourself to men only. Women have a voice, their opinions about sports are often well considered and informed. Don't make a big deal out of it, just do the right thing. Don't look to be a pioneer or some sort of ground breaker, just take great talent--no matter what gender it might be--and use it. Stop trying to make us watch something we don't want because it's "targeted at women." Just give us good sports reporting, let us watch great sports, stop assuming all fans are men, and we'll all be fine.
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