News and views

Holy smokescreen

Sony withdraws its latest game LittleBigPlanet as it transpires that a song on its soundtrack features two lines that can be found in the Qur’an. Cue worldwide comment on how this is an overreaction, a sop to Islamic sensibilities and a bald statement on the Islamo-Christian relationship. Radio 4 notes sombrely that when Sony offended Christians by featuring a game scene in a church, no games were withdrawn.  Or the real story, if you prefer: Sony sees an opportunity to grab worldwide marketing for its new game and does so.

How many games have already been distributed and must be withdrawn – if any? However many, the cost of redistributing them is nothing in relation to the cost this degree of exposure would have cost. The song that has been sampled has already been recorded and released on a record label without any apparent outrage, and the game has not as yet been criticised by anyone. Somebody ‘just noticed’ the lyrics in the song.

It’s another example of how much PR and marketing have infiltrated the news, to the extent that almost everything we see and hear has a spin, an ulterior motive, an agenda. Learning to listen for those, and developing an ear for how they work, is essential – for discerning truth, and for incorporating our own business messages into the media discourse.

It’s senseless to frown and complain that we have come to this. It’s just how things are, so we evolve and we learn to read and write it at the same level. Well done, Sony.

Matt