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If you haven't been following the story, Gamespot recently fired game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann.  Gerstmann gave a fairly low score to Eidos' Kane & Lynch while Eidos was buying lots of advertising space on Gamespot.  His termination lead to rumors that he was let go due to his review after pressure on Gamespot from Eidos.  At least, it was a rumor.  However, the gaming blogosphere soon started to state it as if it were fact.  Ironic, the media blasting Gamespot for lacking journalistic intergrity is showing a lack of it when covering the story about it.  Yeah, that sentence makes my head hurt too.

Now, most of the sites have of course been referring to things as "speculation."  However, it's a shift in the tone.  The original tone seemed to be, "This is a theory, but we really have no idea what's going on."  The tone now seems to be, "We don't have any facts, but we're damned sure this is what happened."  The problem is that between those two tones, nothing happened.  All that has happened is some PR approved posturing by both GameSpot, it's employees, and Mr. Gerstmann.  Granted, I said most of the sites.  The always reactionary Destructoid completely redesigned their site to include a logo smilar to that of GameSpot that says Cash Whore.  Yep, that's right, no new facts and they are accepting is as written in stone.  Heck, the crew from 1UP.com protested in from of the GameSpot offices.  How the fuck do you protest when you don't even know what happened?

I get it, we all hate the corporate nature of reviews.  This is why I refuse to accept advertising money from game companies for this site.  Even if it's not an overt bias, the bias is there.  However, without knowing the facts you can't say anything.  What if they just thought his Kane & Lynch review was another in a series of sub-par reviews?  Have you read Gerstmann's work?  I have and I've always found his reviews to be crap.  What if Gerstmann was doing something wrong at his job?  We don't know what happened.  Legally, CNET/GameSpot can't tell us what happened.  However, Gerstmann can and hasn't.  If it were true that it was corporate greed that led to his dismissal, don't you think he'd be backing the boycotts and protests?

Either way, nobody knows what happened and we may never know.  But I'd really love it if the rest of the gaming media could pull their heads out of their asses and stop trying to sensationalize this thing prematurely.  I know that Destructoid gets a lot of hits because of their antics.  I knot that most Kotaku and Joystiq readers have made up their mind about the situation and those sites want to placate their opinions.  You need to rise above it.  Destructoid's antics are just as money grubbing and wrong as those in the story they are spreading. Kotaku and Joystiq have an obligation to maintain a sense of impartiality. Otherwise, you are behaving similarly to those you accuse

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