LONDON: Staff at gaming network IGN have issued an open letter to senior management, and owners Ziff Davis, calling for an explanation after a post linking readers to pro-Palestinian charities was deleted from its website.
IGN apologized for the post, published on May 14, but were criticized for “blatant disregard for the most basic standards of journalistic integrity and editorial independence” in the letter, which was signed by over 70 members of staff.
Friday’s deleted post, attributed to “IGN Staff,” had said: “We want to highlight the humanitarian crisis in Palestine because, while there has been fighting in the region for decades, recent escalations have seen a catastrophic loss of Palestinian lives.”
It added: “Palestinian civilians are currently suffering in great numbers in Jerusalem, Gaza, and (the) West Bank, due to Israeli forces.”
It then linked readers to websites for groups working in the region, including Doctors Without Borders and the UN Relief and Works Agency.
But on May 16 the post was deleted and replaced with a statement from IGN saying: “Our philanthropic instincts to help those in need was not in line with our intent of trying to show support for all people impacted by tragic events.
“By highlighting only one population, the post mistakenly left the impression that we were politically aligned with one side. That was not our intention and we sincerely regret the error.”
IGN said it had donated $25,000 to the charity Save the Children “to aid those civilian lives impacted across the entire area.”
But staff were left unimpressed by the decision, believing it to reveal double standards at the company.
One IGN employee told The Guardian: “We’ve posted multiple, similar charity appeals in the past, and received nothing but support from the ownership — even on so-called ‘contentious’ issues like the Black Lives Matter movement.”
The employee added: “There was absolute shock among staff about not just the removal itself, but about how that removal (and the explanation for it) was handled. For such drastic action to be taken was unusual enough, but for it to be done with no oversight from those who had written the post — and multiple hours of silence from those responsible, both internally and externally — was confusing and upsetting for many members of staff.”
