Your Liberal Media?

I know I must sound like a broken record at this point when discussing videogames and violence.

But the alarmism is pretty high in this article from Reuters entitled "Islamists using US video games in youth appeal. " It also repeats the falsehood (or, at best, unproven claim) that videogames are somehow used to train people to kill, which, as I've explored, hasn't been supported by any studies.

It discusses the not at all new phenomenon of using popular media to propagandize to children. In this case it happens to be branches of radical Islam. In my post from last Wednesday it was White Supremacists and Anti-Immigrant Extremists. You might even find games espousing the theories of a radical religious faction's eschatology.

One excerpt seemed particularly ridiculous:

" 'Battlefield 2' ordinarily shows U.S. troops engaging forces from China or a united Middle East coalition. But in a modified video trailer posted on Islamic Web sites and shown to lawmakers, the game depicts a man in Arab headdress carrying an automatic weapon into combat with U.S. invaders."

Uh, guys. I hate to tell you this, but Battlefield 2 allows you to play as the Middle Eastern Coalition, where you can kill American troops. The actual game! Americans are playing it. A lot. The Islamism is going to leak out of our graphics cards and get under our skin! Shriek, aiee. All the usual kerfuffle.

At this point, the media does such a good job with scare tactics that it seems like they don't use much else.