Lau 1

Noah Lau

Jorge Cerna

Humanities ⅓

13th May 2019

How does the popularity of sports cause media outlets to practice poor ethics in journalism?

Within society, there are many who are na​ï​ve enough to believe everything they hear.

Many media outlets use this to their advantage to influence its audience or to accept something

as the truth. With the new age of social media, many publications focus on instant news.

Journalists use whatever information they know within the hour and post a report about it. This

can cause misinformation to spread, because of how little is known within the first hour. With

newspapers, this was rarely a case, because it wasn’t possible to send out newspapers as fast as a

story on the internet can be uploaded. In sports, there are many instances where the media

attempts to use their platform for misdoings. Sports give journalists a medium to commit

unethical actions to push an agenda and lead false narratives. Many journalists include

misleading information, bias and false narratives in their reports. Misinformation within reports

played a major role in the first reactions to the Ellie case.

The Ellie case displays the media’s misinformation that puts the gaming community in a

bad light. A female player named Ellie quickly became a top 500 player and many people within

the community became suspicious of the legitimacy of Ellie, because of several bizarre patterns.

Ellie was soon invited to play for an Overwatch Contenders team (Overwatch Contenders is a

major series of professional Overwatch tournaments held around the world). Ellie then left the

team days after joining and claimed it was due to harassment from the community. Many
 Lau 2

journalist rushed to conclusions and insisted that the sexist patriarchy within the community is to

blame for this. It was later exposed that Ellie was disguised as a girl and the harassment claims

were not the reason as to why Ellie left her team. A top-500 player named Punisher later came

out that he was playing under the Ellie alias as a “social experiment”. The same journalist who

rushed to rash conclusions chose to double down and claimed that regardless of the true identity,

this incident still proves sexism is the reason why there are so few female players in the esports

scene. It was later revealed that there was zero online presence from a female, besides having a

girl speak through voice chat while Punisher played as Ellie (Snyder ). Dot Esports’ Nicole

Carpenter claimed in her article, “On paper, Overwatch esports should be a meritocracy. But it’s

not — and Ellie’s situation is a stark reminder of that. Women in esports typically face similar

harassment for skill or perceived lack-thereof. It happens at all ranks, on the ladder and in

elite-level play.” Along with this Carpenter claims that the entire community harrasses any

women trying to enter the esports space (Carpenter). It can be assessed that Carpenter’s report

were pushed with an agenda to paint the community as a toxic and sexist environment.

Carpenter’s claims are false as the community grew suspicious of Ellie, because of her account

being such a low level, compared to her rank. At no point was Ellie’s gender a focus on the

suspicions. Carpenter’s report is a clear example as to how journalists push their agenda by

spreading incorrect information. Additionally, Paul Tamburro of Game Revolution reported that,

“The exact reasons behind Ellie’s departure are unclear, though the sexist motivations of many

members of the community are unfortunately obvious. With professional Overwatch leagues

featuring very few female players, the mere presence of a woman in Contenders NA was enough

to cause some to target her, denying evidence to the contrary in an effort to disprove the
 Lau 3

existence of a female Overwatch pro player” (Tamburro). Tamburro makes bold claims stating

that Ellie’s departure from her team were caused by sexist motivations behind the community.

Tamburo, however, doesn’t back these claims, because they simply are untrue. At no point was

Ellie under scrutiny solely on her gender. Ellie is believed to have been extensively harrassed by

the community to the point that she had to leave her team. In reality, Ellie isn’t a real person and

that the entire incident was a social experiment, blown out of proportion by the media. This story

allowed the media to push a narrative that the gaming community is sexist, when this is in fact

incorrect. Lastly, Kaila Hale-Stern of The Mary Sue, claims many things such as if Ellie had a

more masculine name, like Elio, then this incident may not have happened and completely

rejected the thought that Ellie may actually just be a man disguised as a girl (Hale-Stern).

Hale-Stern concludes that had Ellie been male, then Ellie wouldn’t have had as many suspicions,

but this is completely false, because suspicions were not raised because of her gender.

Additionally Hale-Stern completely fails as a journalist to understand more of the story. When it

was exposed that Ellie may potentially be fake, Hale-Stern outright rejected this thought and

chose to double down on her beliefs that Ellie was indeed a female and claims that Ellie wasn’t

were ludicrous and used as a way to prevent the community from being portrayed as sexist.

Hale-Stern’s reporting is a prime example of journalist in sports taking advantage of their

platform to push a false narrative. By using the Ellie story, many media outlets pushed their

agenda to attack the esports community, when they were spreading false information and biased

claims. Along with the Ellie example, media outlets have also biasly reported on the Duke

Lacrosse Team’s incident

 Lau 4

The Duke Lacrosse Team incident shows off how journalists quickly took sides on the

topic without fully understanding the circumstances. In this incident, Crystal Mangum accused

members of the Duke Lacrosse Team of raping her at a party. The police then investigated the

incident and arrested three members of the lacrosse team with charges of first-degree rape. Mike

Nifong, the district attorney as the lead prosecutor released a statement claiming that the crime

did indeed occur and that it was racially motivated (Mosteller 15). Later, 46 out of 47 members

of the lacrosse team took a DNA test, which failed to connect any of the members to the alleged

rape case. From Mangum’s DNA test, there was genetic material found in Mangum, however

none of them were from the members of the lacrosse team. Nifong, however, falsely represented

the DNA tests stating that the DNA had only been found from a single male source, Mangum’s

boyfriend. The withholding of information from the DNA Security Inc, DSI, led to the firing of

the director of DSI who wrote the misleading report (WRLA). Nifong was then charged for

being too outspoken and concealing the crucial DNA evidence. Nine months later, Nifong

dropped the rape charge and offered Mangum to abandon the entire case. When Mangum

refused, Nifong gave the case to Roy Cooper, the North Carolina attorney general, who four

months later dropped the remaining charge against the players and declared them innocent along

with calling Nifong a rogue prosecutor (Cohan). In the midst of this event, the media contributed

to the notion that the lacrosse team members were guilty, before all the evidence came out. A

blogger named Amanda Marcotte wrote, “In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to

CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good fucking god is that channel pure evil. For

awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just

because they held someone down and fucked her against her will—not rape, of course, because
 Lau 5

the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman

anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair” (Marcotte). Marcotte’s blog

spread false information about the case which is problematic. The blog post caused many people

to first side with the Mangum, who falsely accused the lacrosse players and tarnished the

player’s names. With this event, Marcotte was able to push her own political agenda. Along with

this, Nancy Grace held a strong pro-prosecution stance against the athletes. Nancy Grace stated

on the air,​ ​"I'm so glad they didn't miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like gang rape!" and

"Why would you go to a cop in an alleged gang rape case, say, and lie and give misleading

information?” Grace strongly advocated for the players to be prosecuted and implied that the

players were already guilty. On live television, Grace spread untrue statements and slandered

these players, all to push the agenda of rich white people being bad. In addition to just small

events causing media outlets to influence its audience into believing their value, entire media

outlets, like Kotaku, use their platform to push false narratives.

The media outlet Kotaku primely shows how journalists use their platform as a way to

push false narratives to cater to a certain audience. Kotaku is a news site which reports mostly on

gaming news. Specifically, Kotaku’s esports vertical “Compete” reported on esports topics. In

one article, Kotaku published a piece regarding women being professional players within the

esports scene. The two people conversing had no credibility or insight on the topic they were

giving their opinion. The two have never pursued esports as a profession and had little to no

involvement in esports at any pro level (Lewis). Within the discussion, the two claim that the

gaming community holds women back from breaking into the esports scene (D’Anastasio &
 Lau 6

Myers). This article is an issue, because the two are depicted as being knowledgeable from the

scene and use their accounts to justify their opinions, but most of them are largely untrue. The

two state that the gaming community holds women back from esports, but they don’t provide

real evidence to this and this claim has largely been disproved. The article shows thats the two

are leading a false narrative to make it seem that the industry is at fault. By faulting the industry,

this fuels and justifies people’s hatred on the esports industry, even when what they’re reading

are lies. Kotaku does this in order to gain clicks from this audience and uses this as their business

model. Additionally, Kotaku wrote an article where they “fought” racism by exposing the usage

of pepe the frog and the ugandan knuckles meme that the audience and teams used during a

broadcast of a game. Richard Lewis points out that these memes originally did not have a racist

connotation and were appropriated by a handful of racists (Lewis). Kotaku creates the notion that

everyone who uses these memes are racist and the majority of people who uses these memes are

part of the gaming community. This generates a stigma that the gaming community is racist for

using these memes when they’re an innocent part of the internet culture. Kotaku is able to use

this story to cater to an audience, specifically one that dislikes gaming culture, because of their

“racist beliefs”. This false narrative is harmful for society, because this causes a group of people

to shut out others, because of their hobbies. Kotaku’s report on the Eleague Boston Major

included a large amount of objectionable and false content, which allows lies to transform into

facts. In one example, Kotaku claims that there was a Trump banner within a crowd, in which

they presume part of the audience were racist Trump fans. The banner they claimed were present

at the event stated, “Make American CS Great Again”, because of a U.S. based team playing.

This quote is generally a joke, and hypocritically, Kotaku themselves have used a joke similar to
 Lau 7

this multiple times (Lewis). Additionally, Kotaku mentions the lack of women playing in the

tournament, when there isn’t anything stopping women from breaking into the scene, besides the

current lack of female talent within the scene (Lewis). Kotaku’s purposefully makes these

refutable claims to spread mass misinformation. Using this report, Kotaku creates the perception

that gaming culture is a problem, because of misconceptions of what happened. The report also

gives people to build an argument against gaming culture on the basis of false narratives.

Kotaku’s business model seems to be entirely based on spreading misinformation in order to

appeal to a certain audience to get clicks.

Media outlets abuse their influence by using sports, what many regard as a way to escape

reality, to push their agenda. The new age of instant media causes many stories to have some sort

of major issue in them. For example, in the Ellie case the media portrays the community as

misogynistic for “harassing a female player from going pro,” which was untrue. Along with this

in the Duke Lacrosse case, the media insinuated that the players were guilty, before all the facts

came to light. Lastly, the media outlet, Kotaku devotes their site to leading false narratives to

cater to their audience. Journalist continue to include unnecessary things like misleading

information, bias and false narratives in their reports, which is becoming a major issue. There is

no real clear cut way, because corruption is everywhere, however spreading awareness can

certainly help fight the issue. Outing journalists and media sites for practicing these poor

journalistic ethics may also support the cause.

 Lau 8

Works Cited

Carpenter, Nicole. ”North America’s first female Overwatch Contenders player steps down after

harassment.” ​Dot Esports.​ , 3 January 2019

https://dotesports.com/overwatch/news/north-americas-first-female-overwatch-contender

s-player-steps-down-after-harassment

Accessed 7 May 2019

Cohan, William. “Remember (And Misremembering) The Duke Lacrosse Case.” ​Vanity Fair​.,

10 March 2016

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/duke-lacrosse-case-fantastic-lies-documentary

Accessed 7 May 2019

D’Anastaio, Cecila & Myers, Maddy. “What Stops Women From Going Pro In Esports.”

Kotaku.​ , 14 May 2018

https://compete.kotaku.com/what-stops-women-from-going-pro-in-esports-1826021319

Accessed 7 May 2019

Hale-Stern, Kaila. “Female Overwatch Pro Quits After Nonstop and I for One Am Shocked.”

The Mary Sue​., 4 January 2019

https://www.themarysue.com/female-overwatch-pro-quits-harassment/

Accessed 7 May 2019

Lewis, Richard. “The Death Of Compete And Why I Won’t Be In Mourning.” ​VPEsports., ​7

July 2018

https://www.vpesports.com/more-esports/the-death-of-compete-and-why-i-wont-be-in-m

ourning/
 Lau 9

Accessed 7 May 2019

Marcotte, Amanda. “Amanda Marcotte’s Duke lacrosse rape post.” ​Webarchive., 5 January 2007

https://web.archive.org/web/20110724193314/http://letters.salon.com/news/feature/2007/

02/16/marcotte/permalink/821f26ae141f359f9607ff89284c90e2.html

Accessed 7 May 2019

Mosteller, Robert. “The Duke Lacrosse Case, Innocence, and False Identifications: A

Fundamental Failure To Do Justice.” ​Fordham Law Review.​ , 1 January 2007

http://fordhamlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/assets/pdfs/Vol_76/Mosteller_Vol_76_

Dec.pdf

Accessed 7 May 2019

“Paternity Test Ordered in Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.” ​WRAL​., 15 December 2006

https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1107841/

Accessed 7 May 2019

Snyder, Craig. “The Curious Case of Overwatch Ellie.” ​Medium​., 17 January 2019

https://medium.com/@crasny/the-curious-case-of-overwatch-ellie-b6ff29fe7757

Accessed 7 May 2019

Tamburro, Paul. “Overwatch Team Loses First Female Player Due to Unforeseen Actions.”

Game Revolution​., 3 January 2019

https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/477829-overwatch-contenders-second-wind-ellie

Accessed 7 May 2019