Recently, there has been a spate over a post by a local news station from Miami, Florida covering Star Wars Celebration 6 in Orlando, Florida, August 23rd – 26th, 2012.
What they did was take pictures of costumed players or cosplayers, posted them on their websites with very offensive and snide remarks. Some of them of children.
The 501st Legion which is for cosplayers of the Original Trilogy of Star Wars (Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, Rebels) who often travel or troop for charity events and raise money are very angry by these rude comments.
Cosplayers for key organizations follow rigorous standards for their costume builds and attempting to create a believable costume is creative and fun as a hobby.
When cosplayers are attacked for that, it hurts science fiction fandom for movies, literature and games. Sure individuals are “nerds” or “geeks” that dress up in costume, but the smile on children’s faces are enough reason to do it. There are worse hobbies… But even that, bashing adults dressing up at a Convention in their costumes is not a good way to go, especially for a professional news organization.
It is one thing for one person to bash another, while not fun to be at the butt end of that joke, still it is contained. It is another thing when a professional news organization permits that kind of immature mentality and have it pervade on their social media. It shows poor controls of appropriate content management. Any discrepancies or prejudices a reporter and journalist has toward subject matter leaves biased opinion and is not news. That kind of conjecture portrayed in said images from WPLG Local 10 News is an editorial and suggests the limited scope and insensitivity of comments of the pictures.
And the internet is written in ink, not pencil. A hard lesson for this “professional news organization” to learn.
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