Did you hear...?

I read this article the other day that struck me as being rather funny. The article was based a rumor that EA (Electronic Arts), a fairly large American gaming publisher was facing a buyout by Nexon, a fairly large South Korean publisher. The article posited, that because of less than stellar sales and retention rate of The Old Republic a Bioware MMO and massive layoffs around the corner, that EA was ripe for a buyout either hostile or consensual. The article was ridiculous not for its content but for the very basic fact that every single fact in the article was based on rumor and speculation.

You see the article was entirely based up two well published rumors. One, a few days before another article had said that EA was going to layoff a thousand workers. Even for a company of EAs’ size that is still massive layoffs. To put it in perspective, Sony has said they would cut 10,000 jobs after four consecutive years of loss. The second article was about a stock analyst who had given the prediction that EA would lose half a million subscribers to its big budget The Old Republic, which he said had peaked at 1.7 million subscribers; all of this by March of 2013. So there you have it, a story whose entire foundation was rumor and speculation. It very well might happen, EA might fire a thousand people, The Old Republic, might be at 1.2 million next year, and Nexon might buyout EA; but really since when did we base a rumor on other rumors and call it news?

The news is all about the 24/7 coverage these days; the public demands it and the media supplies it, but come on people lets keep our news squarely based on reality, we’ll all be better for it.