Next GTA Set Across European Cities

I can assure you that is complete nonesense, cant tell u where it is but trust me it isnt set across europe.

Once again this is all rubbish. What you're doing is quoting CVG which mis-quoted the PSM story. Great work fellas.

Here's what PSM actually said about GTA4:

"PSM2 RECKONS: Prediction? GTA IV set in Europe or a world with, say, six cities, is announced as a PS3 world exclusive at E3, available as a UK launch title in 2006. A Rockstar employee recently told us this would be an interesting year whiloe winking and laughing. Hmm."

It's a prediction. The heading for the story is "Speculating Wildly About GTA4' for Christsakes. No 'confirmed', no 'Rockstar rep said', no nothing.

For my money when have rockstar ever released anything at e3? I thought they'd been conspicuous by their absence from the last few? wouldn't it make more sense for them to release it at Devstation 2006?

Anyway before you bash spong too much, they do say its just speculation (admittedly the title was slightly confusing if you didn't read the text) and that they'll be meeting a rep to set the story straight soon. I'd say great work indeed, telling us the story and explaining that they're waiting for confirmation and will reserve judgement until they've been able to speak to rockstar reps (which they've said they're doing.) How is this poor journalism in any way?

Anyway onto the rumour, a european gta does look the way to go. They've done the states pretty much and a huge european island/continent will give them so much more material to work with then anywhere in the usa that hasn't already been done. I am skeptical about whether this is in fact true (marketing it to americans might be hard.), but they've shown they can do a london gta well and i'd love them to do a spoof europe.

Not poor journalism?

Repeating an incorrect story on CVG without checking facts?

Here's the right story to run:
"CVG can't read properly - start bullshit GTA4 rumour".

"Next GTA Set Across European Cities
UK rumour mill fired up again."

Sub-heading, a little indication its a story about a rumour.

"According to a rumour circulated today by UK Games Magazine PSM..."

First line. Its a rumour.

Jeez, they say its a rumour throughtout, god knows there's enough of these about gta, and then they say they're going to speak to a rockstar pr about it. It'd be poor journalism if they didn't say it was a rumour, didn't give the source and weren't trying to get to the bottom of it.

*bangs head against wall*

But the original source of the story - the wishlist in PSM2 - isn't rumour. It's them predicting what they think could happen.

By elevating the piece to the status of rumour they are implying that the story has some worth when... in fact... It's worthless.

I reckon that PS3 will be twelve foot high and purple. Any newssites want to pick up on this rumour? Gooooo ahead.

Thane, the poor journalism isn't particularly in the use of the word 'rumour' instead of 'imaginative speculation'. It isn't even in the wild, sensationalist manner in which the whole piece is written.
Pure and simple, it's in blindly tearing a story that you know nothing about from another website, without even checking the source material first to make sure that what you're writing isn't just complete misguided rubbish.
That's poor journalism.
But then, it doesn't really matter when you're on the internet, does it?
*Going home to hang myself with the cold entrails of this dead donkey*

And how do rumours start? with speculation that snowballs. Anyway the european gta thing has been knocking about for the last few months, they've reported on it before (here),. One could see this new piece as a followup to that story, except "bonafide" magazines are commenting on it too.

Anyway your ps3 rumour would be a good example except this is the conceptual design.

One could even suggest that spong are getting us ready for a shock gta/rockstar announcement later this week and this story was deviously placed so that we'll check back later. But to be honest wtf does it matter.

Anything copied from a Future magazine is bound to be poor journalism. That goes without saying.

But spurious attempts at distinguising between 'Rumour' and 'Imaginative speculation' are never gonna fall under the "good journalism" banner.

CVG perpetuated a rumour that pre-dates the PSM piece. SPOnG reported that rumour (as a rumour). That seems like adequate journalism to me.