[Kotaku UK] Nintendo responds: "We checked with Atlus who confirmed that the actual lyrics of the song do not include the word "retarded"."

[Papercuts]

Read my new post above for the answer as to why :P

After reading that post you quoted your brain is looking for the lyric, so it's carrying a bias or expectation it will be there.

Bloody Destiny is a good tune as well lol.

Click to shrink...

Oh yeah, I've seen this happen before.

It's just such a crazy concept when you pretty much acknowledge that your senses are being influenced if not outright tricked. Whole thing is fascinating to me. It seems MUCH easier to happen when you aren't even familiar with the source material to begin with, so you almost can't hear anything but what you originally feel is "right".

 

[Deleted member 16908]

I saw this article yesterday and was like, "I hope this person never listens to K-pop because if they do we're about to get a crazy article about how almost every single K-pop song has the N-word in it"

 

[TheChungusAmongUs]

Kotaku UK reports Atlus says slur "not in official lyrics" -- a glib, non-enlightening answer

Click to shrink...

Considering this OP is responsible for one of the wildest thread derails I have ever seen on this forum, this type of thread title is par for the course for them

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

Kotaku tries to find something to get upset about

Click to shrink...

BREAKING NEWS: Man invents fictional scenario and then gets angry about it.

Kotaku UK reports Atlus says slur "not in official lyrics" -- a glib, non-enlightening answer

Click to shrink...

Basically, OP was trying to make it seem like the alleged slur was indeed in the song, and Atlus was covering up, despire the apology article from Kotaku UK(and the original author) clearly stating that not to be the case.

Click to shrink...

Thanks !

 

[Linde]

Racial bias combined with a race for clicks is a hell of a drug.

That article ignores nearly a dozen SPJ guidelines. It is a textbook example of what not to do. I would expect something like that out of a high school blogger who just tried to author their first "investigative" piece. Not a professional journalist at an international outlet.



Getting criticized for the article should never be labeled as "unnecessary hate." Calling out racism is always a good thing, and never unnecessary.

East Asian voices speaking ESL have been mocked for years, and the original article just continued that tradition. It was a clickbait hit piece, designed to impugn the singer with a false accusation. The vocalist's only "crime" was singing in accented English.

It's well known that suggestion plays a part in how people hear things (see the various viral "challenges" that have made the rounds), which means that anyone listening after reading the original piece is also going to be biased.

Honestly, the only surprising thing is that this got called out at all, because this type of racism is usually overlooked. It shouldn't be overlooked though. People should rightfully get called out for this, in the same way the Twitch streamer got called out for blackface. The more this can be "unnormalized", the better.

Click to shrink...

This is a great post.
Everyone ignores the fact that it was indeed, straight up racism and should not be overlooked

 

[Deleted member 888]

Oh yeah, I've seen this happen before.

It's just such a crazy concept when you pretty much acknowledge that your senses are being influenced if not outright tricked. Whole thing is fascinating to me. It seems MUCH easier to happen when you aren't even familiar with the source material to begin with, so you almost can't hear anything but what you originally feel is "right".

Click to shrink...

Without a doubt, I think the Bloody Destiny example is "harder" to come across yourself, as it doesn't sound as clear to me as the Persona 5 song. But I can still vaguely make out "Mexican" and "Asshole" when I've been told to expect it and where in the song.

But none of this is a new phenomenon and has plagued music listeners for generations.

So besides Kotaku reaching out for comment first, an article should have gone out of its way to link that study I posted or mention other examples of people hearing things in popular music.

Instead, it comes across like the Reddit post from 2017, which is just an ordinary person creating a topic, not an international games outlet that is visited by thousands.

Using Kotaku as a front for "Dear Diary" or what amounts to a "Showerthoughts" post isn't going to go down well if it backfires. I'm sure everyone can move on, but some good learning all round here not to jump to conclusions, especially when it's thinking you are hearing something in a song.

 

[nicolasacmf]

Kotaku fucked up. What else is new.

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

it seems that since Atlus made many mistakes regarding trans people, the author of the article felt that there was probably some insult for deficiency hidden in the song and tried to capitalize the moment

 

[TheEchosOfTheCyborg]

I'm genuinely surprised this thread has been up for long after the last one was locked. This was an honest mistake and yet the sheer amount of harassment, transphobia and "fire her" Laura's has gotten is disguesting and it bothers me to see even Reseters doing the generic "click bait" and adding fuel to fire is bothersome and something we should really be above. In fact I'm getting the sense many here are using this as an excuse to just crap on Kotaku in general.

 

[Deleted member 888]

For anyone from the UK

 

[Bit_Reactor]

I'm genuinely surprised this thread has been up for long after the last one was locked. This was an honest mistake and yet the sheer amount of harassment, transphobia and "fire her" Laura's has gotten is disguesting and it bothers me to see even Reseters doing the generic "click bait" and adding fuel to fire is bothersome and something we should really be above. In fact I'm getting the sense many here are using this as an excuse to just crap on Kotaku in general.

Click to shrink...

Woof.

If that's your take from this thread than I strongly recommend re-reading a majority of the comments here.

There are many hills to die on, many of which I'd applaud, but just because someone has a specific identity does not deflect their responsibility for journalistic integrity, nor their inability to take ownership of it, scapegoat responsibility when given the chance, and then flee the scene because they went for clicks.

If anyone wrote this article, even someone from Kotaku proper, it would rightfully get lambasted this hard because it's nonsense. When Filip at IGN plagiarized and stole from a youtuber he was lambasted.

Improper reporting and click baiting and ignoring responsibility are not exclusive to any one group of people. And to pretend like others haven't (on this very forum) been treated equally because of their identity when they screw up is an appeal to emotion and not actually on the content being covered. I won't reply further to this thread.

 

[Kensuke]

What are the lyrics though, curious now.

 

[Deleted member 32018]

I'm genuinely surprised this thread has been up for long after the last one was locked. This was an honest mistake and yet the sheer amount of harassment, transphobia and "fire her" Laura's has gotten is disguesting and it bothers me to see even Reseters doing the generic "click bait" and adding fuel to fire is bothersome and something we should really be above. In fact I'm getting the sense many here are using this as an excuse to just crap on Kotaku in general.

Click to shrink...

So we can't criticise poor journalism?

 

[eggs_]

I'm genuinely surprised this thread has been up for long after the last one was locked. This was an honest mistake and yet the sheer amount of harassment, transphobia and "fire her" Laura's has gotten is disguesting and it bothers me to see even Reseters doing the generic "click bait" and adding fuel to fire is bothersome and something we should really be above. In fact I'm getting the sense many here are using this as an excuse to just crap on Kotaku in general.

Click to shrink...

The harassment Laura's receiving is disgusting, especially when we know that it was apparently published against her wishes. But I do think this article is more than an "honest mistake", in the sense that its willingness to spread possible misinformation is pretty messed up for a journalism site, and does deserve critical discussion.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

What are the lyrics though, curious now.

Click to shrink...

My understanding, based on the responses we've gotten, is that it's quite likely nobody knows.

 

[DNAbro]

What are the lyrics though, curious now.

Click to shrink...

Who knows. Probably isn't "retarded" though.

 

[LossAversion]

It sounds cliche to mention this but people often forget that there is a person behind every article and such.

Mistakes were made but people need to relax a little.

Click to shrink...

There's also a person behind every subject of articles like these.

I'm not justifying harassment (of which there is plenty on Twitter, I'm sure) but let's not act like this was some harmless article. It was presented as a fact that the singer of this song used a slur and they were not given a chance to respond at all before this was just thrown up for clicks. Plenty of people will not read this correction. It wasn't a harmless mistake.

 

[Hitomi J-Scrub]

This is a great post.
Everyone ignores the fact that it was indeed, straight up racism and should not be overlooked

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I hope the singer and/or songwriter will simply not hear of this non-issue because I bet she doesn't feel great Westerners are trying to make her look like a piece of shit just for having an accent. They should really take down the original article — but I guess clicks are a hell of a drug.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

I'm genuinely surprised this thread has been up for long after the last one was locked. This was an honest mistake and yet the sheer amount of harassment, transphobia and "fire her" Laura's has gotten is disguesting and it bothers me to see even Reseters doing the generic "click bait" and adding fuel to fire is bothersome and something we should really be above. In fact I'm getting the sense many here are using this as an excuse to just crap on Kotaku in general.

Click to shrink...

Perhaps you should imagine a scenario where the people in here are not crapping on Laura (though she definitely shouldn't have made this article at all all things considered. Sound reasoning would stop the idea from being entertained), but criticizing Kotaku UK on how they're handling the situation, ie pushing the article before she could get a response, gag ordering her to stop talking about it until they made their own response, and failing to update the article in a timely manner because they still can't get a grasp of their new backend, thereby allowing the backlash to become exponential to the point where Laura gets a breakdown?

 

[Zippo]

What a weird misfire of an article.

Click to shrink...

 

[TheChungusAmongUs]

Woof.

If that's your take from this thread than I strongly recommend re-reading a majority of the comments here.

There are many hills to die on, many of which I'd applaud, but just because someone has a specific identity does not deflect their responsibility for journalistic integrity, nor their inability to take ownership of it, scapegoat responsibility when given the chance, and then flee the scene because they went for clicks.

If anyone wrote this article, even someone from Kotaku proper, it would rightfully get lambasted this hard because it's nonsense. When Filip at IGN plagiarized and stole from a youtuber he was lambasted.

Improper reporting and click baiting and ignoring responsibility are not exclusive to any one group of people. And to pretend like others haven't (on this very forum) been treated equally because of their identity when they screw up is an appeal to emotion and not actually on the content being covered. I won't reply further to this thread.

Click to shrink...

This.

Does she deserve to be attacked based on her identity as a trans woman? No.

But to claim everyone criticising Kotaku for publishing this article is engaging in a form of transphobia or are doing solely because she is trans or to "shit on kotaku" is also ignoring what people are saying.

The bare minimum amount of research could have been done. The lyrics have been publicly available as well as the song for almost 2 years now. Instead this feels like a blatant attempt to generate clicks because Joker is in Smash and saying there is a controversy when there isn't one is a good way to generate clicks.

 

[Deleted member 3294]

This is a great post.
Everyone ignores the fact that it was indeed, straight up racism and should not be overlooked

Click to shrink...

If someone ever doesn't tell me I accidentally said a slur or something because I'm not a native English speaker, I'm blaming concern trolling posts like this one.

 

[Zippo]

Kotaku made a complete non-issue into an issue.

Scum.

 

[Rotobit]

It really seems like most of the blame falls on the editors side of the table here, though it feels like the only reason it was brought up in the first place was to chase the trending topic - Persona 5's soundtrack has been on store shelves for over two years.

I get that chasing trends is journalism now but it still sucks, and the writer of the article most likely would have known that was the motivation. EDIT: Ok if that comment is real about the disabled gamer reaching out, I can understand it, though it still should have gone through way more checks.

As for the lyric itself, I can see why someone would hear that, but it really makes no sense in context and that alone should give it the benefit of the doubt. My guess is Kotaku UK rushed it through because they'll all be out for the Easter holidays. Here's hoping they don't have any ICYMI tweets ready to go out with it...

Also this has all just reminded me of this weird thing from back in the day, I don't think Nintendo ever commented on it?

 

[Hero]

No, I went out and asked people and then decided not to cover the story but thanks for questioning my professionalism.

Click to shrink...

You should've seen this gem from Hobbes yesterday where he said non-journalists didn't have authority to speak about the basics of journalism, now he's telling you that apparently you don't either. Hobbes Who has the authority to speak on ethics in journalism according to you?

Oh my god, the fact that people are still trying to bat for something even the original accusers have admitted is a mistake tells me all I need to know about some people desperately trying to seek outrage to validate their own pre-conceived notions about what a game or a company are like.
Persona 5 has more than enough actual substantiated issues in terms of social representation and issues we can take time to call it out on; fixating on 780ms of freestyle improv by a singer singing in a language she is not familiar with, with a thick accent, in a recording session three years ago, is, to quote common parlance, not it, chief.
Fucking move on. If you really want to be mad at Persona, make a thread about its homophobia or issues with sexism, which are real and existent, and which are actually valid reasons to be angry at the game about.

Click to shrink...

This.

 

[Avitus]

I'm genuinely surprised this thread has been up for long after the last one was locked. This was an honest mistake and yet the sheer amount of harassment, transphobia and "fire her" Laura's has gotten is disguesting and it bothers me to see even Reseters doing the generic "click bait" and adding fuel to fire is bothersome and something we should really be above. In fact I'm getting the sense many here are using this as an excuse to just crap on Kotaku in general.

Click to shrink...

Talking about an article being poor form isn't harassment of the author. Journalists also get fired for mistakes all the time, so that's not beyond the pale. This isn't the first mistake Kotaku/UK has made either, so discussing the editorial priorities and standards of the site(s) is fair game.

Handwaving everything away is nonsense and I'm glad Era doesn't encourage it.

 

[IDreamOfHime]

I can understand not deleting articles, but they haven't even edited the original article with an update about the story being nonsense. So one day someone is gonna stumble upon that article just the way it is....

 

[jett]

Kotaku really wanted this to be a thing huh. Surprising to see an outlet so willing to muck up their own reputation.

 

[TheChungusAmongUs]

My understanding, based on the responses we've gotten, is that it's quite likely nobody knows.

Click to shrink...

Who am I?
Am I not unique?
Maybe I'm not here at all
Look, the fakers
Blinding us with lies
The breakers of us all

Oh, it's useless
What could it mean that we're here?
Can we make a difference
If we don't break outta here?

Wake up, get up, get out there
Raise your voice against liars
Feed your anger like fire
Why does nobody want change?

Just imagine you're out there
Swatting lies in the making
Can't move fast without breaking
If you hold on life won't change

The fakers
Are all sick at heart
Their faces hiding their fear
They look down on
All the rest of us
Like they're some special breed

Who's the high lord
Who thinks he's better than us?
Ain't it a crime, that?
Is there a mission for us?

Who is that high lord ...
Who'd kill a million of us?
And as the bell tolls
Is there no remission for us?

Wake up, get up, get out there
There's more to life than their way
If you'd live you can not stay
Why does nobody want change?

Let your voices ring out, yeah
Take the mask off and be free
Find yourself in the debris
If you hold on life won't change

Wake up, get up, get out there
Raise your voice against liars
Feed your anger like fire
Why does nobody want change?

Just imagine you're out there
Swatting lies in the making
Can't move fast without breaking
If you hold on life won't change

The following are the official lyrics from Persona 5 Original Soundtrack.

But hey Who knows?

 

[Deleted member 3294]

I can understand not deleting articles, but they haven't even edited the original article with an update about the story being nonsense. So one day someone is gonna stumble upon that article just the way it is....

Click to shrink...

They explained why the article hasn't been edited yet:

Finally, the original has been updated to reflect this statement and link back to this apology. However, we've recently been making back-end improvements to our site, and an unfortunate consequence is a new problem where updates are taking quite a while to appear. We will quash this gremlin but, until then, the site is slow to update. This has been the subject of conspiracy theories. Some of you simply demand that we delete the article.

Click to shrink...

 

[IDreamOfHime]

They explained why the article hasn't been edited yet:

Click to shrink...

I simply don't believe them.

 

[Damn Silly]

For anyone from the UK

Click to shrink...

For much longer than I'd like to admit, I did believe the lyrics were Hot Dogs Go On.

 

[Deleted member 888]

Kotaku really wanted this to be a thing huh. Surprising to see an outlet so willing to muck up their own reputation.

Click to shrink...

These comments are doing the rounds on Twitter, and while I can't verify them as the source is apparently Kinda Funny Facebook, it puts a hell of a lot of blame on Kotaku/management

They do line up with Laura saying she has a gag-order on Twitter and cannot speak.

Maybe it's time for Jason to enquire what Kotaku UK management is/was doing here?

 

[Deleted member 3294]

Who am I?
Am I not unique?
Maybe I'm not here at all
Look, the fakers
Blinding us with lies
The breakers of us all

Oh, it's useless
What could it mean that we're here?
Can we make a difference
If we don't break outta here?

Wake up, get up, get out there
Raise your voice against liars
Feed your anger like fire
Why does nobody want change?

Just imagine you're out there
Swatting lies in the making
Can't move fast without breaking
If you hold on life won't change

The fakers
Are all sick at heart
Their faces hiding their fear
They look down on
All the rest of us
Like they're some special breed

Who's the high lord
Who thinks he's better than us?
Ain't it a crime, that?
Is there a mission for us?

Who is that high lord ...
Who'd kill a million of us?
And as the bell tolls
Is there no remission for us?

Wake up, get up, get out there
There's more to life than their way
If you'd live you can not stay
Why does nobody want change?

Let your voices ring out, yeah
Take the mask off and be free
Find yourself in the debris
If you hold on life won't change

Wake up, get up, get out there
Raise your voice against liars
Feed your anger like fire
Why does nobody want change?

Just imagine you're out there
Swatting lies in the making
Can't move fast without breaking
If you hold on life won't change

The following are the official lyrics from Persona 5 Original Soundtrack.

But hey Who knows?

Click to shrink...

None of the section where the word is supposedly said is in there, seemingly cause the bit is freestyled.

 

[HylianSeven]

Who am I?
Am I not unique?
Maybe I'm not here at all
Look, the fakers
Blinding us with lies
The breakers of us all

Oh, it's useless
What could it mean that we're here?
Can we make a difference
If we don't break outta here?

Wake up, get up, get out there
Raise your voice against liars
Feed your anger like fire
Why does nobody want change?

Just imagine you're out there
Swatting lies in the making
Can't move fast without breaking
If you hold on life won't change

The fakers
Are all sick at heart
Their faces hiding their fear
They look down on
All the rest of us
Like they're some special breed

Who's the high lord
Who thinks he's better than us?
Ain't it a crime, that?
Is there a mission for us?

Who is that high lord ...
Who'd kill a million of us?
And as the bell tolls
Is there no remission for us?

Wake up, get up, get out there
There's more to life than their way
If you'd live you can not stay
Why does nobody want change?

Let your voices ring out, yeah
Take the mask off and be free
Find yourself in the debris
If you hold on life won't change

Wake up, get up, get out there
Raise your voice against liars
Feed your anger like fire
Why does nobody want change?

Just imagine you're out there
Swatting lies in the making
Can't move fast without breaking
If you hold on life won't change

The following are the official lyrics from Persona 5 Original Soundtrack.

But hey Who knows?

Click to shrink...

That's not what this was about in the first place.

https://youtu.be/ATcKBMYYSJs?t=92 (timestamped at 1:32)

 

[Redfox088]

Damn Laura. You just lost a supporter. This is just bad journalism

 

[Avitus]

Maybe it's time for Jason to enquire what Kotaku UK management is/was doing here?

Click to shrink...

The UK branch is a separate company, right? An expose from Kotaku US would be quite something.

 

[Redfox088]

At least they apologized. If they doubled-down, it would be even worse.

Click to shrink...

I disagree some people will not hear about the retraction. This is slander. Atlus should sue.

 

[Deleted member 888]

The UK branch is a separate company, right? An expose from Kotaku US would be quite something.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure. The thing is, even though Laura can take responsibility for penning this article and not doing due diligence, if it's true Kotaku UK, as in, at management level, were partly or largely to blame, it's hardly all fair the single journalist gets all the blame.

 

[requiem]

I'm genuinely surprised this thread has been up for long after the last one was locked. This was an honest mistake and yet the sheer amount of harassment, transphobia and "fire her" Laura's has gotten is disguesting and it bothers me to see even Reseters doing the generic "click bait" and adding fuel to fire is bothersome and something we should really be above. In fact I'm getting the sense many here are using this as an excuse to just crap on Kotaku in general.

Click to shrink...

Kotaku knew what they were doing when they allowed this unverified opinion article masquerading as journalism (i.e. Atlus hit piece) to be published. They deserve every ounce of criticism they're getting for this. What were they thinking?

 

[TheChungusAmongUs]

None of the section where the word is supposedly said is in there, seemingly cause the bit is freestyled.

Click to shrink...

That's not what this was about in the first place.

https://youtu.be/ATcKBMYYSJs?t=92 (timestamped at 1:32)

Click to shrink...

Could be "restart it" or "retort it"

 

[Amaterasu]

If op is looking to be outraged, he could just go listen to the song Shake That.

 

[--R]

These comments are doing the rounds on Twitter, and while I can't verify them as the source is apparently Kinda Funny Facebook, it puts a hell of a lot of blame on Kotaku/management

They do line up with Laura saying she has a gag-order on Twitter and cannot speak.

Maybe it's time for Jason to enquire what Kotaku UK management is/was doing here?

Click to shrink...

So it wasn't her fault but her boss' fault? That makes quite a lot of sense considering her behavior last night.

 

[Bit_Reactor]

These comments are doing the rounds on Twitter, and while I can't verify them as the source is apparently Kinda Funny Facebook, it puts a hell of a lot of blame on Kotaku/management

They do line up with Laura saying she has a gag-order on Twitter and cannot speak.

Maybe it's time for Jason to enquire what Kotaku UK management is/was doing here?

Click to shrink...

Given history and experience from other people who have worked alongside the author in question I highly doubt this is the case. Including people I know from the industry who have worked in close proximity. This seems like a Grade A deflection but at this point comes to personal attacks that I could get flamed/in trouble for.

Regardless the posts they were making on groups and stuff seem textbook deflection and self victimizing to avoid responsibility. And up until it was flagged they seemed to stand behind the article's writing.

Oh well, what's done is done.

 

[HylianSeven]

Could be "restart it" or "retort it"

Click to shrink...

It could be, I believe Nintendo when they say it is definitely not "retarded". Honestly I'm not even sure how that would fit in the context of the lyrics. I think it's more likely "restart it" or "retort it" like you said.

 

[Deleted member 888]

So it wasn't her fault but her boss' fault? That makes quite a lot of sense considering her behavior last night.

Click to shrink...

Given history and experience from other people who have worked alongside the author in question I highly doubt this is the case. Including people I know from the industry who have worked in close proximity. This seems like a Grade A deflection but at this point comes to personal attacks that I could get flamed/in trouble for.

Regardless the posts they were making on groups and stuff seem textbook deflection and self victimizing to avoid responsibility. And up until it was flagged they seemed to stand behind the article's writing.

Oh well, what's done is done.

Click to shrink...

Kotaku hasn't updated the original article, not even to point to the new article - https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2019/04/18...ates-persona-5-dlc-includes-a-disability-slur

Rich Stanton has taken lead on the new article - https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2019/04/19/we-screwed-up-with-that-persona-lyric

Looks like management has gotten involved and made their own mess of this rather than letting Laura update the original article. You don't have to delete the original article, but a website of this calibre really should be amending it.

edit: Though the new article claims the old is updated, but unless I'm going blind/my browser cache is outdated, I can't see it

Finally, the original has been updated to reflect this statement and link back to this apology. However, we've recently been making back-end improvements to our site, and an unfortunate consequence is a new problem where updates are taking quite a while to appear. We will quash this gremlin but, until then, the site is slow to update. This has been the subject of conspiracy theories. Some of you simply demand that we delete the article.

Click to shrink...

They state back-end improvements, but I don't know how that means an article cannot be updated??? They can publish new articles all of today but an old one cannot be updated until bug fixes?

 

[LossAversion]

These comments are doing the rounds on Twitter, and while I can't verify them as the source is apparently Kinda Funny Facebook, it puts a hell of a lot of blame on Kotaku/management

They do line up with Laura saying she has a gag-order on Twitter and cannot speak.

Maybe it's time for Jason to enquire what Kotaku UK management is/was doing here?

Click to shrink...

So if this is real, her boss basically published her story without her consent? And now they don't want to take any of the responsibility? What the fuck.

Maybe Laura would have agreed to put the article up with those changes, maybe she wouldn't have. But the blame is completely on her boss if they bypassed her when publishing this article. Again, assuming this is legit.

 

[Bit_Reactor]

So if this is real, her boss basically published her story without her consent? And now they don't want to take any of the responsibility? What the fuck.

Maybe Laura would have agreed to put the article up with those changes, maybe she wouldn't have. But the blame is completely on her boss if they bypassed her when publishing this article. Again, assuming this is legit.

Click to shrink...

This seems like the response someone would want if they published an article they don't want to stand behind anymore. I know you're speaking neutrally about assuming it's legit but merely the hint of someone "doing something without their consent" specifically frames the topic in a light that will cause problems for anyone trying to debate about the article itself.

This will then tangentially fall off into the topic of transphobia, consent, gamergate, etc instead of keeping the topic firmly on the article. I'd like to be wrong about it, but just the mere insinuation that someone could have taken a trans authors work "Against their will" and published it creates a whole new discussion that would go in all kinds of directions.

Kotaku hasn't updated the original article, not even to point to the new article - https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2019/04/18...ates-persona-5-dlc-includes-a-disability-slur

Rich Stanton has taken lead on the new article - https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2019/04/19/we-screwed-up-with-that-persona-lyric

Looks like management has gotten involved and made their own mess of this rather than letting Laura update the original article. You don't have to delete the original article, but a website of this calibre really should be amending it.

Click to shrink...

Fair enough. I'll conclude that my speculation is at this point irrelevant and what's done is done. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Shoichi]

These comments are doing the rounds on Twitter, and while I can't verify them as the source is apparently Kinda Funny Facebook, it puts a hell of a lot of blame on Kotaku/management

They do line up with Laura saying she has a gag-order on Twitter and cannot speak.

Maybe it's time for Jason to enquire what Kotaku UK management is/was doing here?

Click to shrink...

Interesting.
LKD wanted to review it and hold off before being sent up. Had "seems to be" and non-confirmative statements suggesting it may not be fact. Boss decides to remove all the non-confirmative parts and goes aheads to publish without LKD approval...

Now is being prevented from any statement saying as such. Something going down in that office of theirs

 

[rochellepaws]

Racial bias combined with a race for clicks is a hell of a drug.

That article ignores nearly a dozen SPJ guidelines. It is a textbook example of what not to do. I would expect something like that out of a high school blogger who just tried to author their first "investigative" piece. Not a professional journalist at an international outlet.



Getting criticized for the article should never be labeled as "unnecessary hate." Calling out racism is always a good thing, and never unnecessary.

East Asian voices speaking ESL have been mocked for years, and the original article just continued that tradition. It was a clickbait hit piece, designed to impugn the singer with a false accusation. The vocalist's only "crime" was singing in accented English.

It's well known that suggestion plays a part in how people hear things (see the various viral "challenges" that have made the rounds), which means that anyone listening after reading the original piece is also going to be biased.

Honestly, the only surprising thing is that this got called out at all, because this type of racism is usually overlooked. It shouldn't be overlooked though. People should rightfully get called out for this, in the same way the Twitch streamer got called out for blackface. The more this can be "unnormalized", the better.

Click to shrink...

Well said. I've enjoyed Kotaku a lot more in recent years and I'm really disappointed that they'd do something as outrageous as this, I'm still in disbelief.