Kotaku

So the Toronto Sun's editor might be a prick, but the writer who penned the piece was a little more forthcoming. One of our readers heard back from the article's scribe, who had the following to say. The journo is even allowing her reply to be published. Email after the jump.

Thanks for writing. You may not know this, but reporters don't write headlines. We just write the story and send it in. The editors create the headlines and the front page.

Look, the lead cop said Need for Speed may have contributed to the crash. Hence the headline. But I want to send you a short opinion piece I wrote this morning. I was going to put it up on a new blog I'm starting, but we couldn't get it to work yet. So here it is for you:

No doubt, we media hacks will be tripping over ourselves today on the issue of video games and their influence on behaviour in the wake of the alleged street-racing murder of Toronto cabbie Tahir Khan. Read my story about Khan here and the video game that may have contributed to his death.

Add your voice or comments here. Some random thoughts:

The lead cop on this case, Det. Paul Lobsinger, was careful with his words. He made it clear the game
Need For Speed, found on the front seat of one of the suspect s cars, may have contributed to the crash, but it wasn t solely to blame.

Indeed, drag racing, speed-addicted yahoos, car crashes and vehicular homicide date back to when the first cars rolled off the assembly lines. (Many cops will tell you, however, that attitudes have changed and kids are more reckless and more prone to race on city streets today than yesteryear, when muscle cars stuck to the remote country roads.)

So can a street racing video game influence a player to take his or her need for speed out into the city? Can a first-person shooter turn a young player into a real-life killing machine?

A major review of the last 20 years of research on violent video games and behaviour published last August by the American Psychological Association found a definite link between such games and increased aggression. In one study of more than 600 Grade 8 and 9 students, the more kids played video games, the more likely they were to be rated by their teachers as hostile. Read a summary of the study here.

Studies like this are ammunition for parent activists against media
violence, such as Toronto s own The Free Radical and its founder, Valerie Smith. She s taken on everyone, from controversial rappers to violent games such as Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Postal 2. Check out her complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission against The Star.

Toronto is also home to one of the leading skeptics on the link between media violence and behaviour. Professor Jonathan Freedman did his own review of the research in 2000 and found no link, although many of his peers disagree. Freedman writes:

"The scientific evidence simply does not show that watching violence either produces violence in people or desensitizes them to it."

My opinion? We need to own up to the fact that we re in a brave new world of simulated violence and insanity. Twenty years ago, gamers chased ghosts, shot down spaceships and helped a little frog cross the road. Today, it s about killing cops, murdering innocent passersby (the bloodier the better), stealing cars and mowing down anyone in your way.

I recently played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The first night after playing, I dreamt I went on a violent rampage, stabbing anyone who walked close to me. So yes, the game is brutal and it imprinted on some part of my subconscious.

It didn t turn me into a killer. None of my friends who play similar games has changed for the worse. Of course, we re all educated adults, well-adjusted people who can easily distinguish between fantasy and reality.

But I do fear for children, my own 10-year-old nephew being one: I shudder when he tells me (with a smirk) that he s played Grand Theft Auto.

Like everything else these days, it falls on parents to get involved. Limit your child s exposure to violent video games, but don t be so nave as to think they re not going to play somewhere else. Instead, tell them what s wrong about the violence and images, tell them why you don t like it, tell them why it s unacceptable.

Give them a moral compass and they ll find their way safely through the filth when they inevitably trudge through it.

Battling The Toronto Sun [Kotaku]