Yesterday, The Evening Standard made a pretty tasteless accusation, claiming that the hooded little bastards currently rioting throughout London had been “inspired” by Grand Theft Auto. It seems that someone at the paper realized that the story was baseless, as it’s been removed.
Rather than issue a formal retraction, the paper simply reprinted that day’s copies with the GTA references removed. The original story stated: “Children as young as ten, inspired by video game, among the looters.” It now simply says that the children are “hunted by police.”
The Standard received a lot of criticisms from various blogs and across Twitter, which likely encouraged the reprint. It is believed that the opinion of a single police officer was used to report the videogame connection as if it were a fact. Clearly, there’s no factual basis for the accusation, and the Evening Standard knows it.
Of course, we’re all mostly surprised that The Daily Mail wasn’t the one to start this.
Now GTA is NOT to blame for London riots [CVG]
