The press didn’t check facts either, despite Karissa claiming their articles were further confirmation of her story. At some point, Karissa appeared to stop relying on her own words and kept pointing to companies, press, and others as validation, which wasn’t proof, they were just echoes of her own story and sometimes, echoes of the falsehoods she told. She even publicly stated that she essentially
dictated her story to the journalists who interviewed her,
criticizing Kotaku for being the only outlet that gave her any pushback.
I should point out that some of the press didn’t reach out to me at all before painting their own lurid interpretation of events with their own embellishments — Sean Murray of
The Gamer, in particular. You can read it in his article, and you can see the unedited url that references it to this day.
To be clear, the game press don’t need to check the “facts” — all they need to do is
report that someone said something or fall back on the word
alleged, and it’s a story. And so they did, and the clicks started rolling in. As soon as the press “report” something like this, however, it carries the same validation as if it was researched and fact checked, which no press publication to my knowledge did. Either they didn’t take the time, or they may not have cared because it’s not really “on them” for the truth. All they have to do is report
someone said something, which is
technically the truth, but it’s far from the reality of what actually occurred.