Brendan Keogh, a writer and academic from Melbourne, Australia who has contributed to sites like Ars Technica, Polygon, Overland, Kill Screen Daily and ABC, has been caught in the crosshairs of #GamerGate. His conflicts of interest have been exposed for the public to see and have been discovered by BoogiePopRobin, and detailed and listed by Jasperge107 over on the GamerGate wiki, likely before being entered onto DeepFreeze.it.

The conflicts could be considered quite minor but they are still apparent. Keogh’s article on Overland, an Australian outlet, from back in the fall of 2014, contains numerous name-drops for people that Keogh feels readers should check out. However, some of them, such as content creator Avee Bee, have financial ties to Keogh.

Back in October of 2013, Brendan Keogh had acknowledged on Twitter that he had donated a “piddly amount” of money to Avee Bee’s Patreon. This financial tie was not disclosed in the article on Overland.

The same situation applies to Cameron Kunzelman, a game maker who Keogh mentioned in his Overland article without disclosing that he also has financial ties with Kunzelman, as evidenced on the Patreon page… as well as Cara Ellison, Dan Golding, Jenn Frank, Liz Ryerson and Mattie Brice who were also briefly mentioned in the Overland piece, all having financial ties to Koegh. No disclosure.

Keogh has seven articles published at Overland and the one article listing the various individuals Keogh names is part of a collection available in issue 214 of Overland that can be purchased from the publication’s website. However, readers probably wouldn’t be aware that the people being name-dropped in the article have close ties to Keogh and he doesn’t seem inclined in the least bit to acknowledge the financial ties and incentives for promoting some of the individuals named in the piece.

I attempted to reach out to Brendan Keogh but he has me blocked and could not provide a comment.

Nevertheless, if these journalists can’t be trusted to disclose the most basic of information regarding relationships and financial ties, how can they be trusted with anything they write? How can anyone expect that what they’re writing is being done from an objective and fair standpoint and not one with the intention of promoting friends through cronyism and nepotistic tendencies?

There have been many journalists fighting against #GamerGate’s efforts for more disclosure. These journalists have displayed a tendency to protect the old methods of safeguarding their intentions to maintain the status quo and brush away any concerns of ethical breaches in order to avoid being held accountable for their actions.

Brendan Keogh, in particular, was quick to tout #GamerGate in his article for ABC as a…

“[…] rallying point for a misogynistic campaign of abuse that continues to target women in the videogame industry.”

Unfortunately for Keogh, not only has his conflicts of interest been exposed but the narrative of #GamerGate being about harassment has been debunked by a peer reviewed research report by WAM! Hopefully Keogh will be open to updating his article on ABC to avoid maintaining a spread of misinformation and defamation against anyone utilizing the hashtag for better ethics in the media space.

Moreover, keep in mind that the ABC mentioned above isn’t the American Broadcasting Corporation, but the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Even more than that, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was found to be in breach of multiple ethics violations, as one of their own reporters admitted to spinning a story on #GamerGate to focus on conflating the hashtag with harassment against women, even though she was supplied evidence of the media’s corruption.

Thankfully, the ACMA was not entirely keen on the narrative spin and they have been investigating the ABC over their coverage of #GamerGate.

As for Brendan Keogh, hopefully he opts for disclosure in his future articles when covering friends or subjects of interest he has financial ties to. Otherwise he may find himself with a rather lengthy portfolio on DeepFreeze.it.