Hello everyone,
It is very rare, actually almost non-existent, that I send out mass E-Mails for purposes other than Zelda Sages. However, I believe this particular case well warrants a mass E-Mail. For those of you not keeping up with the news GameSpot writer Jeff Gerstmann, a prominent site writer and employee for ten years, was fired on November 30th due to assigning the score of 6/10 to the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. As it turns out, CNET was receiving advertising money from the game's publisher Eidos, and a great deal of money at that. After seeing the review score for the clearly lackluster game, Eidos threatened to pull their ad money from CNET. This sparked the firing of Jeff, for speaking his opinion with truth. CNET had no right to fire Jeff for stating a factual opinion, something that a product reviewer is paid to do. This sets a horrifying precedent for other employee's of GameSpot under the new management regime which took over CNET less than a year ago.In retaliation for this injustice, gamers are being asked to boycott CNET on Monday December 3rd (tomorrow). To do so, they ask you not visit GameSpot or any CNET run websites including: News.com, Metacritic, MP3.com, Movietome, GameFAQs, Gamerankings, filmspot, download.com, and shopper.com. This day long boycott will serve as protest for the injustice we have witnessed over the last few days. Despite whatever your feelings may be on Jeff (he was the one who gave Twilight Princess an 8.8) you must realize that we are fighting an injustice. Though not everyone agreed with his reviews, he still conducted himself in a professional matter and gave his professional opinions. If game reviewers can not speak their mind uncensored what will come of reviewing? GameSpot's own GregK phrased it very well, "I guess you should no longer come to GameSpot for opinions. Everything is a great game, and I'm sure we'll be handing out 1,200 game of the year awards each year." DO YOUR PART to fight against the huge corporation working to strip Jeff of his constitutional rights!
Thankyou,
The Zelda Sages Staff*For those not in the United States, the US constitution outlines a freedom of speech clause (article 1) which protects an individual's right to speak so long as it does not incite a clear and present danger to the country, or in some cases such as the school system interfering with the educational mission of the school. It's far more confusing than that, although the only way he could have been justly fired was if he participated in the act of libel, which is false speech which harms any public individual or corporation, of which he obviously did not due looking at other reviews for the game.*
An email I got form Zelda sages, but still WTFH? Is this right or no? Even though we hate the guy for it, I still don't think he should of gotten fired for this.
