Not long ago, the internet killed the print edition of the once venerable Newsweek magazine. I was a subscriber many years ago, finding it a convenient way to keep up with world happenings when I was in business school. But that was then. In March of this year, Newsweek’s parent company, IBT Media, revived the weekly periodical. It should have kept it buried.
As you have no doubt heard by now, Newsweek recently posted an anti-online gambling piece on its website and appears set to have it be its cover story when the print edition comes out this week. I am not going to use this space to pick it apart too much; Chris Grove at OnlinePokerReport.com and Haley Hintze at Flushdraw.net did a thorough enough job at shredding it already. I will just sum it up by saying that Leah McGrath Goodman’s article makes Clifford Irving’s “autobiography” of Howard Hughes look honest. In fact, had Goodman done even a sliver of the legwork Irving did in his fictional effort, the quality of her article would have improved ten-fold.
Newsweek has the word “news” in it. This should imply, to most people, that it is a publication that educates its readership on the important goings-on, reporting on them in as unbiased a manner as possible. Of course, some stories lend themselves to being slanted one way or the other (for example, I don’t think anyone will complain about a journalist painting terrorists as bad people), but most topics deserve to be researched thoroughly and have all sides presented, if there are multiple sides to the issue.
What Goodman did in “Poker Face” is a disgrace. It is an opinion piece disguised as journalism. It presents only the anti-online gambling side, the Sheldon Adelson and his cronies side, with no effort to delve into what proponents of online poker have to say. She didn’t look for facts, just the opinions of one extreme. Some things she presented as fact weren’t even back up. For example, she quoted child psychology and psychiatry professor Jeffrey Derevensky as saying, “I had one kid, being raised by a single mother, who stole two of her credit cards and lost $20,000 on PokerStars in one month.”
That’s it. We are supposed to take that as fact. There was no follow-up to find out the entire story. No thought that maybe parents should be responsible for guarding their finances and educating their children as to what they should and should not be doing on the internet. I have two children, five and seven, neither of whom have shown any interest in gambling, despite knowing what Daddy does for a living. They to, however, love their PC and mobile games, many of which encourage micro-transactions. I have explained that they are not to make any purchases without asking and have shown them how to not accidentally click on the wrong buttons. I also have access to in-game purchases restricted on their games and they are locked out of the web browser. I still monitor their activity to be safe, though. Reading Goodman’s piece, you would never know this is an option. You would think PokerStars forced the kid to “steal” the mother’s credit cards.
Side note: I find it hilarious that in the online edition of the “Poker Face” article, the word “PokerStars” links to PokerStars.com. Earlier in the piece, “Slotomania” also contains a link to the Slotomania social gaming site (it’s not even a real gambling site), complete with referral tags. Nothing like benefiting from online gaming when it suits you, huh?
Naturally, I am upset about the Newsweek article because it paints my industry in a negative light. But more than that, the dishonesty of the writing is what really infuriates me. If there is something that legitimately deserves criticism, that is fine, as long as the proper research is done and the reporting is honest. I have written plenty of negative articles in my career, but I was always fair. I don’t skip over facts just because they run contrary to my stance.
The thing is, I am not even “pro-gambling.” I’m not a big gambler at all. I enjoy playing poker when I can, but other than that, I can take or leave gambling. I am, however, a proponent of allowing adults to gamble online if they so choose. If there is a reason we should not be allowed to do so, I am more than happy to hear it. But Newsweek is not giving me that. It is giving me biased editorial and telling me it is news. I know better, but most people do not, and that is what has me all riled up.
