Yesterday, I posted on some of the issues raised by the Supreme Court review of a California law restricting the sale of video games to minors. And I suggested that we get together again today to review the coverage. My contention is that this is in part a science story, because it turns on whether video games are bad for kids. That’s an empirical question; not a matter of opinion or legal doctrine. And it’s critical to the case: If research shows conclusively that video games are not bad for kids, the law is a remedy for a problem that doesn’t exist–and great legal minds shouldn’t be wasting their time on this. I suggested that science writers ought to weigh in on this question. Is Halo bad for kids? What are the facts?
Robert Barnes wrote a reasonable piece for The Washington Post, but he didn’t take the issue too seriously:
Torturing or maiming a Vulcan is not enough to trigger California’s law prohibiting the sale of such games to minors. The damage, the state’s attorney told the court, has to be done to “an image of a human being.”
Heh-heh. As far as I know, Barnes is not a science writer. Here is how he addressed the question of whether the games are harmful: “Social scientists debate the long-term impact of violent games, parents worry about a technology their children understand better than they do…” That was it. I doubt the reference to social scientists was based on any reporting among social scientists. Is it a debate for social scientists, or is there a consensus?
A search of Google news didn’t bring up any science writers’ bylines that I recognized. Nor did I find anything on Discover‘s blogs, which is where I got on to this story yesterday. A search at Scientific American came up empty. Nothing at Nature, either.
I suspect most papers didn’t have much space for a story like this on the day after the election. On the other hand, The Washington Post–the nation’s most political newspaper–did find room. Perhaps science writers are not up to writing yet this morning, bleary-eyed, as they might be, from staying up to see whether Christine O’Donnell would be elected to the Senate where she could put an end to the creation of MICE WITH FULLY FUNCTIONING HUMAN BRAINS!
Whatever the explanation, this was a great news peg for a story on whether violence in video games is harmful to kids. And it was a great opportunity to fill a hole in the news coverage, the way science writers are best equipped to do. Circumnambulate the opinions, detour around the legal arguments, and get to the facts. Bad. Or not bad. Or we don’t know.
Writers who miss opportunities like these make it easy for editors to eliminate their jobs when the budget is tight. And they make it easy for editors to retain the political and court reporters who did cover the story–just not as well as we could have.
– Paul Raeburn
P.S. Note Charlie’s excellent post below along the same lines–why science writers should be paying attention to–and writing about–the election.
Updates: Jill Adams writes to say that she wrote about this for the Los Angeles Times in May, when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The verdict: There is considerable debate over whether these games do harm to children. And Charlie spotted a brief, single-source Washington Post piece by Leslie Tamura, which also raises concern about violent games.
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