This story is about irresponsible journalism, or 'entertainment' journalism as it is becoming known - news reported in a deliberately provocative or distorted way, intended to 'amuse' the reader and damn the consequences.

Increasingly nowadays, I think people are getting sick of bad journalism, especially opinion pieces which pose as being something else. The media can and does influence our daily lives, and individual journalists have a lot of power to affect social attitudes and sway public opinion.

Specifically, I expect most Planetcrap readers dislike the way that the mainstream media has recently been trying to convince people that violent games are evil and dangerous, while the gaming press has been trying to convince them that they are just a healthy, harmless way of passing the time - neither side presenting any evidence, of course, just preaching in that high-and-mighty tone that journalists seem to be born with.

As the 'Crap has been off-air for a while, and the worst of the media's witch-hunting / blind defending of games took place in that time, I'm guessing there are a lot of people out there with pent-up opinions they'd like to share.

To kick things off, I'll fill you in on something that has been bugging me recently. It isn't directly games-related, but it concerns a site most of you have probably visited sometimes. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting for your entertainment today... The Register. (Cue half-hearted drum roll and apathetic fanfare.)

Once you've had a quick scout around The Register, go and have a look at this story from the Observer newspaper: Where child porn lurks on the Net. Unashamedly mainstream and deliberately non-technical, that was the result of around four months of research into a British ISP, Demon Internet, and a regulatory body, the Internet Watch Foundation. I think it turned out very well. The only thing I wasn't happy about was that the article didn't go far enough, as some of the more 'shocking' information was excluded for legal reasons.

Now go and have a look at how the article was covered by The Register. Fairly straight reporting (although I'd question the repeated use of the word 'allegedly' when referring to known facts) but what you won't know from reading the story is that the subheading on the site's main page dismissed the Observer article as a "scare story which goes too far".

Along with terrorism, kidnapping and information that may lead to mass hysteria, I think it's fair to say that reporting about child porn and child abuse in general requires the utmost care. That care - above and beyond - was taken with the Observer article, so I think it was extremely irresponsible of The Register to dismiss it as a "scare story", especially when their own article made no attempt to explain why they described it as such.

More disturbing, when I contacted the Register journalist who wrote the story, his explanation was: "It is our view at The Register that too many Net stories are scare stories." Not much of an explanation at all, really. (He even went on to say that the Observer article could be viewed as either a scare story or "fair comment", which didn't make much sense to me at the time and still doesn't.)

Hoping that The Register would invest some time in more objective reporting, I explained that there was a lot of information not included in the Observer article that I would be willing to give to them - no payment, no conditions, I'd just hand over the info. I made this offer twice, to two Register journalists, and neither was interested. Neither even asked what sort of info I was talking about.

Naturally, this got me thinking: What sort of journalist dismisses as a 'scare story' the reporting of a commercial conflict of interest that allows paedophiles easy access to child porn, then can't offer any decent reason for why he did so and turns down information that could have lead to an important story? Easy: an entertainment journalist.

Since all of this took place, about a month ago, I've made a point of reading as many Register stories as possible, and it has become obvious that the site is pure, unadulterated entertainment news: Dull stories are written cynically with lashings of sarcasm; stories about individuals or companies include facetious insinuations about their integrity and reputation; stories about products or services pose quasi-satirical questions about their worth without explaining why.

In other words, The Register journalists are taking the most tabloid of approaches to their reporting of news - they write in such a way as to provoke an emotional reaction, whatever it is and at whoever's expense. It's appalling journalism, but it pulls in the crowds like nothing else.

Go and have a look through some of The Register's stories to see for yourself what I mean, but if you want to jump to the most blatant examples, here are a few recent ones that I've picked out:

Metallica sues Napster. The most biased piece of writing I've seen in a long time, reporting Metallica's decision to sue Napster for "in effect, trafficking in stolen goods".

After quoting drummer Lars Ulrich's comments about Metallica being sickened that their music is "being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is", for some reason the Register journalist points out that Metallica is "as much a tight business organisation as an artistic endeavour" and then sardonically dismisses Ulrich as a 'tub thumper'.

Does a 'tight business organisation' not have a right to defend its commercial interests? Is the law suit less valid because the person speaking about it is the band's drummer? This appears to be what the Register journalist is hinting at, but he doesn't actually come out and say it - if he did, at least readers would know they were reading an opinion piece.

Incredibly, towards the end of the story, the journalist takes it upon himself to declare: "Napster was designed to aid the distribution of MP3 files, and MP3 has always been said by the format's proponents to be about taking the power of distribution away from the major labels and putting it back in the artists' hands. Clearly, as a band of artists, Metallica disagrees. And as an international business too, that goes double."

That summary makes a HUGE leap of non-logic, saying that because Metallica doesn't want people using MP3 to steal their intellectual property, they must also disapprove of other artists using MP3 to distribute their own music.

Something tells me this journalist simply doesn't approve of the law suit against Napster. (He's a bit more restrained in his Napster rapped by rapper story, but I think his bias still creeps in a little.)

Name Keeper names no IP names. I'll not say too much about this because to be honest I'm not sure what I could say without risking lawyer problems, but what sort of respectable publication would run an advertorial, promoting and endorsing a commercial service, but present it as a regular news item?

TV show rips off Britain's brains. Not so much entertainment journalism as just a total lack of responsibility, but that's equally bad, if not worse.

The British TV station Channel Four is running a competition in which people can submit their ideas for online businesses. There's £2m available for investment in ideas that a panel of judges and venture capitalists like the sound of.

Open to abuse? Yes, of course - the people running the show (one of the brightest and most promising production companies in the UK) could conceivably take your idea and use it themselves. Unlikely, but possible.

The Register had so much confidence in this theory that it brazenly declared the competition a rip-off and quoted some legalese from the Terms & Conditions, translating it as: "Basically, whatever you send to us is ours. Forever."

The trouble is, that isn't what the quoted clause means. It means that the show's producers retain the right to use "your name and/or likeness and/or the results of your appearance". They get to print your name and photo in promo material - they don't get to steal your idea.

Being an interfering git, but a helpful one, I sent a note to the Register journalist who wrote the story and pointed out how he had misunderstood the contract. No reply. The story stayed on the site, unaltered. The next day I wrote to The Register's editor, who I've contacted several times before and always received a reply, but he didn't respond either.

And to this day, the story is still on the site, accusing a highly-respected TV channel and production company of conspiring to steal people's business ideas, based entirely on a misunderstanding by someone who doesn't know how to read a legal document.

Entertainment journalism is nothing new - British newspapers such as The Sun and The Sport have worked that way for years and they never pretend otherwise - but it becomes a problem when it masquerades as something more valuable.

The Register is presented as a hard-hitting, serious, accurate and reliable news site, with a team of journalists that have their finger on the pulse of the IT industry and know their subjects inside and out.

The truth is that the site occasionally runs decent exposés and some members of the team are bright journalists with good insider information, but apart from that it's just sensationalist tabloid trash, pandering to its audience's whims and prejudices with distorted reporting, juvenile name-calling and 'underground' news leeched shamelessly from hacking sites.

One PR agent at a large British company, regularly featured on The Register, told me about a year ago how people from the site would often call his department, asking about stories that were pure fiction.

Of course, the stories would be denied, but would then appear on The Register with the only proof offered being the typical between-the-lines argument of "they denied it, so it must be true".

Where the anecdote turns really ugly, is that more often than not, according to this PR agent, his department would get a 'jokey' call from The Register a few days later, admitting that they now knew the story was false, yet the story would stay on the site with no form of apology or retraction.

As far as irresponsible journalism goes, I think that says it all. If, as appears to be the case, The Register has a policy of never publicly admitting to its mistakes, how can anyone ever be confident that anything they read there is true?