You also appear to hold this incredibly odd notion that ethics make a website perfect and any lapse of ethical code besmirches the website as a whole.

GamerGate continues to list The Escapist as one of the good ones in spite of this and that The Escapist published an article promoting a game (Source: The Escapist) owned by co-founder Alexander Macris (Source: Amazon)without disclosure.

The first problem with this concept is that ethics policies do not mean a website will be entirely free of ethical lapses. The New York Times and its writers, the standard bearer of ethics, occasionally have an ethics kerfuffle. Doctors, who have one of the most honored codes of ethical conduct, have ethical lapses. Counselors and social workers, who have very stringent codes of ethics, have ethical lapses. Ethical lapses happen all the time.

Ethics do not protect from or predict ethical lapses. They do not guarantee that one will be completely free of problems. They do not mean that every single ethical lapse will be caught. Instead, ethical codes give a guideline of behavior to be expected. They act to allow the writer a guideline of behavior to check in cases there are ethical lapses or ethical dilemmas. They provide the standard expectation of behavior that is sorely lacking as you have noted.

Ethics are not protective from errors. They are advisory in case of them.

A lapse of ethics does not mean that ethics have failed. They do not mean someone is, at their core, unethical. It merely means that someone had a lapse. This is much like someone who may have a drug problem may lapse onto drugs. Are they entirely defined by their behavior? No. They had a lapse.

You also appear to insinuate that GamerGate not reacting in an approved manner is indicative of apathy. This cannot be further from the truth. One cannot catch every lapse of ethics therefore one cannot be expected to be held to catching each one. One cannot be expected to react in an apoplectic manner to something they did not catch. You are being unrealistic that GamerGate should catch every lapse of ethical decisionmaking lest they not care about ethics.

Ethical lapses will happen. That is why we must have ethics: it is not not so we can catch mistakes and wag our finger in a fit of parental admonishment. Instead, ethics should exist because lapses will happen; ethics can afford the writer with a code of expected behaviors.

Your inclusion of Ralph’s blog is quite puzzling. I have yet to see him identify himself as a games journalist. You did not seem to identify that he did and thus must be held to the ethical code of journalists. As a note, I disagree with the work Ralph does. I think it is needlessly confrontational, but Ralph does not identify himself as a journalist or media. I do not know if his intent is to go to E3, but the point is quite odd considering the qualitative decline of E3 as of late.

We have ample evidence members of the websites you listed including Gamasutra and Kotaku do, in fact, consider themselves journalists as they created their own listserv, GameJournosPro, to share information.

This would seem to identify that these persons identify themselves as journalists and not as bloggers or simple enthusiasts as you attempt to paint them.

The rest of your post is not about ethics.