IGN Staff Call Out Parent Company Over Palestine Charity Post Takedown

Just a few short hours ago, IGN editorial staff posted an open letter on Medium to the parent company J2 Global and senior management of IGN. The letter details how a unilateral decision was made to remove a recent post about directing aid and charities working to help civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. The letter details how senior management subverted their autonomy and independence by taking the post down with no clear reason. They also believe that this gives a bad impression to their readers and tarnishes their editorial integrity. IGN has been considered to be a corporate machine for more than a decade with alleged shady practices when it comes to advertising and monetization of games they review.

Here’s an exert from the letter:

“In our original post, we offered our readers ways to support charities that help injured and sick children, supply educational resources and food assistance to victims, and provide emergency medical relief for those wounded or displaced by the conflict. We feel these efforts should not be controversial. All humans deserve access to these basic rights, and it is important for those with means to offer aid in times of humanitarian crisis.

Our original post was shared by thousands of people, and because of IGN’s size and reach, we were able to serve as a leader for much of the rest of the industry to also help support those whose lives are torn apart by this conflict. We were proud to be part of a team at a site that was able and willing to offer this level of visibility to such critical humanitarian support efforts.

This decision to take down the post was made a day and a half after it was published. 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. 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.“

It’s clear that J2 Global and the senior management at IGN wanted to remain neutral during the current crisis in Palestine. While gamers would like to separate politics from their hobby, it is nearly impossible to do so these days. Just last year IGN supported Black Live Matter and held a Stop Asian Hate charity stream a few weeks ago. IGN is no stranger when it comes to political and social issues. It seems that this issue is much more controversial to IGN’s shareholders and parent company. It would be fun to put on our tinfoil hats and create conspiracy theories as to why the post was taken down, but there’s no need. The letter goes on to request a townhall meeting to discuss the matter in depth:

We, the undersigned, are calling for an all-hands meeting that includes IGN upper management and anyone at J2 Global or Ziff Davis who had a hand in the decision, by the end of the week, in which we would like full transparency about the reasoning and process behind the post’s removal. We ask that the management body responsible for the decision accept that responsibility publicly. We ask that management recognize IGN’s editorial authority and autonomy with regards to what it publishes, regardless of whether that work is news, reviews, features, guides, video content, or promotion of initiatives our staff feels are important, such as issue awareness or charitable support. While we want to make sure all voices on our team — IGN management included — feel able to weigh in on what we say as a site and how we say it, we are adamant that corporate leadership does not get the final word in editorial decisions.

What do you think about this open letter? Do you think Ziff Davis and J2 Global overstepped by taking down the post? Let us know in the comments below.

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