IGN Employees Have Spoken Out After Their Bosses Pulled An Article Of Solidarity With Palestine
"It is our hope that management recognizes its errors this past weekend and is willing to work with us to ensure that IGN can continue to stand as a trusted publication, unconstrained by interference from corporate interests."
IGN Employees have published a scorching open letter after an article offering solidarity with Palestine was pulled from the company’s website.
The article was originally published by the gaming journalism giant on May 14. As Vice have reported, the short piece offered solidarity to “Palestinian civilians” who “are currently suffering in great numbers in Jerusalem, Gaza, and West Bank, due to Israeli forces.” The article then gave a list of charities that donate directly to Palestinian aid efforts.
Within 48 hours, however, the piece was removed, and an “apology” was posted in its place. “By highlighting only one population, the post mistakenly left the impression that we were politically aligned with one side,” read the note, posted to the site’s Twitter account. “This was not our intention and we sincerely regret the error.”
— IGN (@IGN) May 17, 2021
This morning, days after the “apology” was posted online, IGN Employees have published an “open letter” to their parent company, stating that the takedown goes against internal IGN policies, and was made without proper consultation with staff.
“The takedown took place in the early hours of the morning on a weekend with no communication to its initial authors, the general IGN staff, or to the public as to why it happened,” reads the open letter.
“IGN’s editorial team has guidelines about updating content deemed needful of changes, something that we’ve done multiple times in the past — but wholesale removal of pieces without posting an explanatory statement is expressly against our usual policy.
Later in the letter, the employees call the decision “highly disrespectful” and argue that Tweeting the apology from the IGN account gives the improper suggestion that its sentiment was shared across the IGN team.
Fuck yes, @IGN editorial team. So incredibly proud of every single person whose name is at the bottom of this letter.https://t.co/ghfEJjuby5
— Alanah Pearce (@Charalanahzard) May 17, 2021
“The statement inaccurately ascribes the retraction to those “across IGN” rather than to the members of our upper management team who made the decision, giving a public impression that the decision was made by the editorial staff, despite this being a choice we did not make collectively and which many of us do not agree with.”
In concluding, the letter calls for the management team to take responsibility for the retraction, and to re-publish the article.
“It is our hope that management recognizes its errors this past weekend and is willing to work with us to ensure that IGN can continue to stand as a trusted publication, unconstrained by interference from corporate interests, and able to freely inform its audience about opportunities to support important and meaningful causes around the world,” the letter concludes.
You can read the full letter here.