The Crash Override Network leaks were released to the public in late August. The leaks revealed targeted harassment, doxing and admission to sabotage. The leaks were covered by Heat Street and Washington Examiner in the mainstream space, but was ignored by other mainstream outlets. In the case of The Guardian, they were contacted both as part of an e-mail campaign and I personally reached out to one of their editors regarding coverage of the leaks, but there has been no response from the outlet.

The Guardian previously wrote about Crash Override Network, promoting the organization as an anti-harassment initiative. However, the chat log leaks and the Trello card leaks revealed that the organization was also partaking in targeted harassment.

Back on January 19th, 2015, Alex Hern wrote an article for The Guardian about Crash Override Network, entitled “Gamergate targets launch anti-harassment network”.

Hern writes…

“Crash Override is the brainchild of Zoë Quinn and her partner Alex Lifschitz. Quinn’s abuse, at the hands of the nascent anti-feminist Gamergate movement, […]” […] “One of the groups’ first clients was Israel Galvez, a web developer and Gamergate critic who was the target of an attempted “swatting” from a forum linked to the movement.”

Izzy Galvez was actually a member of Crash Override Network, participating in the chats and encouraging some of the behavior of a Crash Override Network member who participated in doxing. Galvez was also involved in a separate doxing attempt against a #GamerGate supporter, as reported by Breitbart.

The news about Galvez and his exploits followed closely on the heels of a separate report of another member of Crash Override Network, Robert Marmolejo, who was found to have allegedly engaged in sexual harassment against multiple women, as detailed in a report on Medium.

The instances of sexual harassment, targeted harassment, doxing and admitted sabotage from members of Crash Override Network seemed overwhelmingly disconcerting.

After an e-mail campaign was initiated to contact the outlets who previously gave positive, uncritical coverage to Crash Override Network, I personally reached out to Guardian editor Keith Stuart about any possible coverage about the issue, since Stuart had run some coverage of #GamerGate and the topic of harassment before, but I did not receive a response.

Previously, Stuart had mentioned in an e-mail back on November 13th, 2014 that they likely wouldn’t be pursuing many stories in the section about #GamerGate or the surrounding controversy, saying…

“I’m not sure how much we’ll be doing going forward – it has sort of calcified as a news story really – it’s descended into in-fighting and factionalism and our readers aren’t really interested in all that.”

The Guardian, according to a repository by This Is Video Games, has published a total of 26 articles involving #GamerGate. 10 Of those articles were published after Stuart had responded back in November of 2014 stating that the news had “calcified” and that “readers aren’t really interested” in the topic, despite publishing many pieces thereafter.

Ironically enough, claims made by The Guardian that #GamerGate was a harassment campaign still has no evidence showing it as such. However, plenty of evidence has surfaced regarding Crash Override Network engaging in doxing, harassment and targeted abuse. The Guardian has offered no response on the matter despite promoting an organization that engaged in nefarious activities.

(Main image courtesy of Ashion101)