Government briefings to the press are crucial instruments, allowing our elected officials to communicate what they’re doing to the people that elected them. They can also be soul-numbingly boring, which everybody involved is fully aware of, but is bad form to acknowledge. So this reporter should have known better than to whip out Pokémon Go.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby (no relation to Nintendo’s adorable pink vacuum creature) was delivering a statement on the war on terror, and towards the end, you can see him stop reading, turn to a reporter, and ask him point blank if he’s playing the game. The reporter sheepishly acknowledges that yes, he’s trying to catch them all. Kirby finishes up his briefing only, once he’s done, to turn and ask the same reporter if he caught anything, and sarcastically apologize for the poor signal in the State Department press room.
Granted, this isn’t the most egregious failure of journalism we’ve seen caused by Pokémon Go, but come on, it’s a terrorism briefing, this stuff is important. Also, we bet the Pokémon selection at the State Department is terrible. It’s probably all Pidgeys and Rattatas. It’s really not worth potentially getting fired unless you can get a Legendary.
(Via CNN)