A God In Ruins is a novel by the author Kate Atkinson, following on from a previous novel by the same author entitled Life After Life.
The book is 24 cm high and 16.2 cm wide. Across the main surface appears a predominantly brown background, depicting wooden boards. Upon them lies or hangs a rabbit, that is possibly dead, but could also be alive.
A great story about ethics in book journalism.
It can’t be a complete review. I don’t see any mention of unusual punctuation, such as oddly placed commas near the end of, sentences.
But that would be biased towards elitism and a static view of English grammar.
yes goad speeling nd grammur is ju evidense oh cis hetro white male privledge.
Cannot compute ‘ethics’ and ‘journalism’ in the same sentence.
What I don’t like about the review is that it magically forces me to have no views or opinions of my own because it doesn’t say that the book could have alternative measurements in hardback or paperback.
At this point, the I believe the book is available only in hardcover, so any discussion on a paperback version would be pure speculation.
Exactly. How dare the reviewer leave no room for different opinions.
One of the shortest books ever written: “Ethics in journalism”
Thom,
s/great//
I don’t think critique/criticism/reviewing (whatever you want to call it) is reviewing. Journalism is more about information while criticism is about opinions. Journalism isn’t necessarily objective, but is concerned with finding truth, which doesn’t really exist in critism. A lot of critics also perform journalism, especially in the video game press, but the two functions are different. So applying journalistic ethical standards to criticism is foolish. That’s not to say there won’t be overlap – all forms of writing will share some ethical standards – but ultimately ethics for criticism should be determined separately from ethics for journalism.
I bring this up because I feel like a lot of people, even among those who recognize the foolishness of calling for unbiased reviews, fail to make a proper distinction between journalism and criticism.
Finally, some one with sense.
The issue people generally have with game reviewers isn’t that they’re opinionated, or that their personal tastes influence their scoring. Arguments about whether true objectivity exists aside, it’s possible to review something without blatantly misrepresenting it to push a particular agenda.
People can have wildly different opinions about something without that being the case. For example, I’ve seen Mad Max: Fury Road depicted as both anti-male feminist propaganda, and as an anti-feminist glorification of violence that objectifies women. Personally I think both groups of gender ideologues have been reading too much into a fun action movie, but neither are necessarily objectively wrong about it.
Unfortunately, some game critics have been going beyond even the more bizarre interpretations I’ve seen in film/book reviews, in some cases downright lying about game content.
It’s the difference between making a case that Lord of the Rings is racist and sexist based on the actual text, versus claiming that Gandalf’s wizard’s robes were a KKK outfit, or making up a scene where Aragorn pimp slaps Galadriel…
For a recent gaming example, there are reasonable complaints about the portrayal of women in The Witcher 3, such as Ciri’s arguably unrealistic lack of chest armour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFimYjlYzEI
But some of the journalists pushing the “sexism in gaming” narrative have been making claims about its “misogynistic” depiction of women that are demonstrably false. For example, the idea that all women in the game are scantily clad and have the same body type:
http://nzgamer.com/reviews/2279/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt.html
One’s a reasonable point of view that can be discussed, whether you agree or disagree with the author’s perspective. The other is simply incorrect, and that’s the kind of biased reviewing that gets people annoyed.
A lot of people who aren’t exactly Gamergate fans have been taking issue with this kind of thing. I’ll quote Gameranx editor Ian Mile Cheong, for example:
“As a games journalist it’s unethical to misrepresent the content of a game, especially when readers depend on you. And it hurts developers.”
“Finding faults with a game in attempts to further a specific agenda, no matter how ‘noble’, does not make it any less dishonest.”
“Contrary to popular belief, it’s possible to be objective in a review. That usually involves not “misremembering” details about the game.”
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/602988234663206912
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/602987460361064448
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/602993142086901760
Sounds like every computer review ever.
Cover material: 5/10
Font: 7/10
# of pages: 3/10
Paragraph spacing: 6/10
I have to get that! It exactly fits into my bookshelf. Even matches the colors of my other two books.