Gaming journalism isn’t lacking in politically one-sided controversies. Websites focus more on scoring wins for a tribe than reporting on actual news, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the story of an alleged pedophile.
On Friday, a short video uploaded to YouTube by a vigilante group known as People v. Preds highlighted a confrontation between two men. One was the man recording and the other was an older male wearing a PlayStation 5 T-shirt, because, as you’re about to learn, that’s dramatic irony.
The clip begins as the cameraman walks up to the other and says, “Hey! What’s up!” before addressing the other guy as Jeff and asking who he is waiting outside for. A bright light is then shone in his face. At that moment, Jeff turns around and walks back inside, but not before the other man says, “We can have a conversation or I can call the cops.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TipsterNews?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TipsterNews</a>: The Senior Vice President of PSN George Cacioppo was caught by an independent pedophile hunting group known as "People v. Preds" for allegedly trying to meet with a 15 Year Old boy for sex. <a href="https://t.co/4ukh4lmy6a">pic.twitter.com/4ukh4lmy6a</a></p>— Tipster (@BanishedJourno) <a href="https://twitter.com/BanishedJourno/status/1467203514971529218?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2021</a></blockquote>
Unknown to most viewers at the time is the fact that ‘Jeff’ was actually George Cacioppo, a senior vice president working in the PlayStation Store division of Sony Interactive Entertainment. Allegedly, he was waiting outside because he was under the impression he’d be hooking up with a child just two weeks past his 15th birthday.
According to People v. Preds, they found Mr. Cacioppo on the gay dating app Grindr. Using a decoy account pretending to be a young boy, they quickly found themselves inundated with dick pics and comments about wanting to suck and swallow, all of which ended up with an invitation to come to his house. They agreed, keeping up the pretense that Cacioppo would be meeting the boy – the same boy for whom ‘Jeff’ was later filmed standing in the driveway waiting.
Not ‘newsworthy’
Less than a day after the video went live, it began to explode across social media, with people understandably calling on Sony to fire the individual featured in it. Yet, interestingly, as the story gained traction, news websites kept mum, as did journalists across Twitter. A noticeably odd void, given it involved a high-ranking executive.
Likewise, the notorious web forum ResetEra, which is known for its ties to the gaming press, began closing threads discussing the matter. Its reasoning for this was that YouTube and Twitter weren’t valid sources. One moderator even said there could only be a thread once there was a “legitimate news article.” The problem, of course, was that the media was staying silent.
When asked on Twitter about the lack of coverage, Dan Stapleton, the executive editor of IGN, expressed the view that it wasn’t “newsworthy.”
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<img src="https://cdni.rt.com/files/2021.12/thumbnail/61add55185f5403b6a127b41.png" alt="Screenshot from "#93 - "GEORGE" 64YO SENIOR VP ENGINEER of PSN INVITED OVER A 15YO BOY AT 430AM....." © YouTube / People v. Preds" />
<figcaption><a href="/pop-culture/542297-sony-executive-terminated-pedo/">Sony fires exec after vigilante 'pedo sting'</a></figcaption>
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Yes, according to a gaming journalist, a high-ranking Sony exec trying to have sex with a child was not newsworthy enough. That was seemingly why there was no coverage of the incident throughout all of Saturday. It wasn’t until Sunday that it began being reported on, and that was only after Cacioppo had been fired by Sony, with most major websites still sharing merely a copy/paste version of the news.