Opinion: Be skeptical of the Pokémon crime wave
Journalist Ishmael Daro argues a legitimately innovative and interesting phenomenon, Pokémon Go, is being bludgeoned to death with our ever-increasing appetite for novelty and news outlets desperate to find something that breaks through the noise.
Have you seen this already?
It's one of the most recent additions to news coverage this week of Pokémon Go.
Since it was released, news coverage of the game has focused heavily on safety and crime.
But journalist Ishmael Daro says that kind of journalism is problematic.
In this audio essay, he argues that not only is it a desperate attempt attract readers and viewers, it also is causing dangerous leaps in logic.
Perhaps the best example of these trumped up Pokemon crime stories is the 50-car pile-up that resulted from a Massachusetts man's decision to stop in the middle of a busy highway to catch of a Pikachu. It was reported in the New York Post and in The Atlantic, among other places. But the story was a complete hoax, started by a fake news website that realized very quickly that anything 'Pokemon' is bound to go viral.-Ishmael Daro, Social News Editor, Buzzfeed
Click the play button above to hear Ishmael Daro's full audio essay.