Open Complaint to ITV

If you haven’t seen this piece of Daily Mail-style over-reaction then I really must insist that you watch before you read.

I have chosen to publish the email of complaint which I sent to ITV in the hope that reading it might give you the inclination to complain also. The games industry needs a voice and I urge you all to write a short email registering your dismay at this broadcast. I have published this email to reinforce the (far more eloquent and informed) comments made by the editor of Sixth Axis, Peter Chapman which can be found here.

To whom it may concern,

I am not normally one for writing to a station to complain about any of its content as I firmly believe everything has its place. However, having seen the segment on the recent Alan Titchmarsh Show in which the video games industry is attacked as if it were some lawless frontier town in 19th Century America being discussed in Washington I feel compelled to make my voice heard.

I realise, of course, that The Alan Titchmarsh Show airs at 3pm and is aimed demographically at an entirely different audience to myself and many of my peers however, I would like to take a moment to run through my grievance with the segment individually.

Firstly, Alan’s introduction to the segment in which the tone of the rest of the “discussion” is set. Alan uses the rather hyperbolic set-up and then tops it off by, instead of suggesting a counter-argument, adding another (albeit completely similar) argument on top. This puts anyone on the panel who is trying to defend the video gaming industry on the back-foot immediately (something which you can tell from the audience’s rather pantomime reaction to many of Mr Ingham’s comments).

Secondly the panel was decidedly weighted against the “representative” of the industry with even Alan himself weighing in numerous times to undermine the message that he had come to put forward. Essentially I have to wonder what the thinking behind the other two panelists were aside from the fact that they just happened to be hanging around the studio like a pair of vultures looking for work. Julie Peasgood, who presented herself as some sort of anti-violence campaigner as opposed to her usual role as “sexpert” on the show and Kelvin McKenzie who is more than comfortable with the glorification of war. These “panelists” seem to have been possibly the two most reactionary Z-listers available to the producers at that time and I am very uncomfortable with their reaction to Ingham’s statements.

The way in which the discussion was carried out troubled me also. I would like to offer as an example the fact that when Mr Ingham attempted to quote any recognised statistics he was challenged by the show’s green-fingered host; however, when Ms Peasgood threw out the tried and tested “video games make children violent” line she was allowed to continue with no request for either clarification or justification of that statement. Furthermore Mr Ingham’s response to her ‘argument’ was met with jeering from the audience.

To begin with I almost went into a state of confused shock as it seemed that Mr McKenzie may be providing the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ approach to the debate but unfortunately as time went on it became clear that his research was, at best, superficial and he decided that he would be better playing to the audience who clearly thought that they were attending a mid-season performance of Jack & The Beanstalk as opposed to a chat show.

Now I’m afraid I must move on to the real kicker in this complaint which, it will come as no surprise, is the completely unfounded allegation that video games contributed to the vicious murder of a child which is completely unsubstantiated and marked the moment that the entire ‘debate’ was completely void. It became clear that there was little more to this than an excuse for some horrifically ill-informed ‘celebrities’ to insult the intelligence of a man who had gone on that show to defend, not only his industry, but also something that I would imagine he loves.

It is utterly indefensible that this segment went the way it did and I would call for an apology on both the ITV website and on the show itself as this treatment of a heavily-regulated industry borders on the defamation of said industry and, frankly, shows the producers and researchers of The Alan Titchmarsh Show up to be utterly incompetent.

Best regards,

Michael Park

If you wish to register your complaint with ITV then you can find their contact details here. This kind of misrepresentation of a genre should not be permitted.