So, I tivo’d the ABC News snippet about GTA that I was pinged about yesterday. It was fairer than I thought it would be, and I have to give Jake Tapper, the reporter, props for actually pursuing and presenting the industry’s point of view, albeit somewhat shallowly. Still, watching it reminded me of why I don’t watch news on TV anymore — 2 minutes on a story just isn’t enough time to go into depth on any topic. While that’s passable for ABC News, who has 30 minutes to present all of a day’s news, it’s somewhat shocking to me that 24 hour news services like CNN and FoxNews don’t do a better job. But I digress.

At one point, the story cut to a mom playing a game, who mentioned that she was now worried that all games a kid bought had hidden Easter Egg content. They then cut to an interview with Jacques Servin, the programmer who was fired from Maxis for an easter egg involving dancing ‘beefcake’ in SimCopter. He alleged that evil, child-corrupting easter eggs are ‘everywhere’. Funny, the only example other than GTA anyone could come up was his own easter egg, with could be shown, uncensored, on ABC News. Pixellated beefcake in 1996 graphics isn’t going to tittilate anyone. Put another way, we have two data points 10 years apart. Let’s keep some perspective.

And this is the primary problem I’ve had with the media over the last few years — their penchant for making all stories seem like ‘the norm’. Columbine, shark attacks and the Grand Theft Auto mod are all abberations. But the media doesn’t treat them that way, they then go off and ask dozens of experts and show clips of them saying ‘Sharks can attack at any time!’ Perhaps, but they don’t. ‘Another Columbine could happen at any moment!’ Dude, it’s been 8 years since Columbine, and while occasional shootings have occurred, they’ve been rare, and none have come close to Columbine’s level of carnage.. ‘Games are full of hidden easter eggs that will turn little Bobby into a serial killer!’ Okay — prove it.

I wished that Jake had mentioned the estimated cost of the recall of Grand Theft Auto — early numbers cited have been $50 million. That would have told the story very succinctly why parents don’t have to worry about this happening again anytime in the near future.