Journalism at its worst

I was reading an ABC News story online recently that a friend linked me to. The story had to do with the Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force urging people to be aware of predators that could stalk kids in the Wii video game, "Animal Crossing - City Folk."

Whew, that was a mouthful. Anyway, moving on. The article goes on to say, according to a representative of the force, that adults shouldn't own the game, thus making it so kids wouldn't be targeted and making it seem like the game's only for kids. ...WRONG!

"Animal Crossing - City Folk" is rated E for Everyone on the ESRB rating scale. EVERYONE. Meaning, anyone of any age can play this game. So, what, adults can't play it because they "might" only be playing it to target kids? That's such a load. Games are meant to be enjoyed by people of all ages. Just because you're over 30 and enjoy playing a seemingly "kiddie" game, doesn't mean you're a predator.

Another major thing is the fact that the article doesn't take into account the Wii's strict friend code system. To play the games with friends, you must always input a code that only they have. Meaning that, you have to KNOW the person to get their code. And as long as parents are monitoring their kids, there's no way this should be a problem. As in, they can make sure their kids aren't getting codes from random people online.

But to really show us that these people didn't do their research, there is also a video to go along with the article. In it, they show an example of an eccentric character they believe may be controlled by someone targeting kids. There's just ONE problem: The character is an NPC (non-playable character, meaning he's computer-controlled) in EVERY Animal Crossing game. If they knew anything about the game, that would have seemed obvious. But it's obvious to ME that someone didn't do ANY research into it before writing the story and making the video.

It just goes to show you that research is valuable, as evident with the comments the article received with people pointing out its flaws. Bad, bad journalism right there...