If you've watched this industry for any length of time, you know that the facts that the enthusiast press print don't always pan out as... um, true. For the most part, this has little to do with the editors and writers because they're lied to on a regular basis. It's the complex game of corporate communications, and we all play the best we can.

The world didn't end when Sony dramatically changed many of the PS3 promises it made in 2005 or when Microsoft under-delivered on its Xbox 360 launch estimates. Also, the enthusiast press gives a wink and a nod to promises made about the launch date of blockbuster games like Nintendo's Zelda series and Duke Nukem (Why is it Taking) Forever.

However, this year, after watching videogame companies break several key promises made during E3 2005, and then reading a new batch of promises made for E3 2006, I was expecting to see a more cynical approach to the reporting of these facts. After all, if they've just shown that last year's promises aren't very good, what about the stuff they said this year?

For this columnist it all came to a head after reading multiple reports on Sony's new controller. A staggering number of articles never even challenged Sony's claim that they couldn't fit force feedback technology in with the motion sensing. Some publications never even mentioned that Sony gave up the technology in part because Immersion has sued them over the technology.

This was a perfect example of questionable facts going unquestioned, and one must wonder what causes this to happen so often?

I looked over my own experiences and rationalized seven reasons why journalists allow this to happen. None are wholly satisfying, but they do present pitfalls that the enthusiast press must overcome in order to provide the readers with the truth that they deserve.

This addresses the "enthusiast" in the enthusiast press journalist. Even though the job description says journalist first, the videogame journalists that best connect with readers are those who have an undeniable passion for games. However, this passion can cloud the perception of what the videogame companies are saying.

The gamer enthusiast WANTS Nintendo to rise again as a major console player. The journalist wants to challenge Nintendo's assessment that graphics don't matter to most gamers.

The gamer enthusiast in us WANTS a strong three-way console challenge. The journalist in us wants to challenge whether Sony can possibly meet its holiday production methods, whether Microsoft can actually hit its promised 10 million unit head start or whether Nintendo can rise again -- even if it means one company will run away with the next generation.

It's amazing how often the gamer enthusiast controls this decision.

Stop me if you've heard this before, but as long as the game companies are the ones paying the bills there will always continue to be a fundamental problem in motivation. If you ask the PR folks, most of them would consider the journalist/game publisher relationship to be a "partnership". One major motivation for not challenging some of these questionable facts is to avoid damaging a "partnership" that really shouldn't exist in the first place.

This can be a troublesome problem because the companies that regularly dole factual whoppers are also the companies that most carefully disperse information on their games. There's always the fear that a too-aggressive challenge of the "official" facts may result in not getting needed information later.

Just look at Joystiq.com, who took a few rogue pictures of the E3 floor and then got banned from Konami's press conference. The fear is legit, but it's still not a valid excuse not to dig for the true facts. Joystiq stood its ground, lost some info, but can still cover Konami with the best of them.

If I ranked these excuses in importance, this would probably go to the top of the list. Arguably the most important reason that the enthusiast press reprints questionable facts without much challenge is that it's simply easier to state what was said and move on.

There is a massive difference between merely reporting an event and reporting on an event while putting what happened in context. Putting events or statements in a greater context takes confident knowledge, thorough research, critical assessment and significant ground work.

This is something that few enthusiast press publications provide time, training or support for.

Although there are notable exceptions, few enthusiast press publications have established standards, regular training and proper procedures in place to accommodate the kind of reporting designed to aggressively uncover questionable facts and reveal truths.

Great reporting doesn't happen by accident; instead, it's most often the result of hard work and high expectations from both the journalists and the publications that hire them.

Every enthusiast press publication in this industry does not need to be a hard-edged news gatherer. However, our industry could certainly use one or two watchdogs. And we could certainly use a few more that are designed to provide high level journalistic quality over news gathering quanitity.

Again, this appeals to expectations. If everyone else in the enthusiast buys a set of questionable facts, it becomes the de facto standard. It's what the readers consider fact and it's what they expect from everyone else. Breaking this cycle or challenging questionable facts every time they appear can make a publication feel like an outsider.

The best story for this industry is that all the big companies meet or exceed expectations, that the industry grows, that gamers get the best games and that everyone makes a whole lot of money. Coincidently, that leans in the exact same direction as all the questionable facts game makers might dish out.

Sometimes the truth might lead to a boring or frightening story. For instance, before the PS2 ever shipped, it became quite apparent that Sony's console was going to rush past the Dreamcast and GameCube and hold off the Xbox to dominate the industry. However, at that time, the enthusiast press held strongly to the fact that anyone could win that generation of hardware.

The tight contest story may have been more exciting, but it wasn't more accurate. Sony did, in fact, dominate the generation, and things turned out exciting regardless of that fact.

Most of the questionable facts presented in this industry involve business estimates or technical comparisons that are beyond the basic knowledge of most journalists. When a company proclaims that its hardware will be 75% more powerful than the competition or that it will ship 20 million units by the start of the next year it can be extremely difficult to challenge.

However, there is no shortage of experts on every conceivable topic. Yes, it takes more work than simply reprinting what a press release states, but sometimes a one-line quote from a knowledgeable expert can carry more weight than a page of press release quotes. That's why they put a phone on every desk.

Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.