You Say Yes, I Say No

So one of the topics of the week in the gaming world was the rumor that a new version of the Nintendo DS could be shown at this year's E3. This, according to the several online reports from most of the big gaming news websites, came from Koichi Hamamura, president of the Famitsu publisher Enterbrain, during a presentation he made recently.

The news came originally from the japanese version of the Bloomberg website, that quoted Hamamura. All was fine and well.

But that day I noticed that the official Famitsu website had a special report on the event, and decided to check it out, look for the original context of Hamamura's prediction and write my own piece about the subject. Problem is...it wasn't there. It just wasn't there. I read the report twice, three times to make sure, but the fact is that the official report on the event had no mention of the supposed statement. But everyone bought the story anyway.

The day after, Nintendo denied that was any new model of the DS being planned for the E3 show. And then one more day later, Enterbrain issued an official note denying that Hamamura had made such a statement. The same websites gave both the reports, but none made note of the Famitsu official thing once again.

So...what gives? What am I missing here?

At one side you have a single japanese website (no other big japanese sites that I know gave the report) that says something, and the official source that says another one, totally contrary to that. What makes you believe the first one? Weren't journalists supposed to check their sources before publishing the news?

I'm not trying to point fingers here, but this episode hit me with something strange. I even came up with that information on the Kotaku post on the subject, but the mods didn't approve my commentary. Go figure. Nothing personal against them.

For the record, I didn't published the first story on the website I work for. This was a personal editorial decision I took. Maybe the reports were right: maybe when E3 comes, Nintendo will show a new DS. Hooray. But that's not my point. My point is that no one noted (or pretended not to note) the official information. And as a journalist, I believe you have to show both sides of every story, not only the one that will bring you more pageviews.

Sorry, I wish I could put the link to the Famitsu report here, but couldn't find the link.