Tap Fish CEO says Daily Show segment was "dishonest"

Last week we posted a segment from The Daily Show which covered free to play games -- specifically, Tap Fish. The piece certainly made the company's CEO Rizwan Virk look like the bad guy, when, according to his blog, this is not at all the case.

It's a "fake news show", sure, but it has its serious moments, and satirical or not, it's hard to argue against the old "truth to every joke" adage. As such, it still has the potential to affect reputation.

Virk, defending that reputation, says the segment was edited and produced with the intention of making him look like the bad guy, which to an extent he feels would be acceptable for the purposes of humor, but in most cases was unnecessary and unfair.

At one point in the bit, Virk is yelled at by a parent angry about his kids' overspending on the game. According to him, the overall tone was actually quite reasonable and pleasant, partly because the parent had actually gotten a refund, and was the one that gave his password out to begin with -- information not depicted by The Daily Show.

There's a long list of details on what went down, so if you're keen, hit the source and read up.

Summarizing, Virk recognizes the humor in the piece, but makes it clear some of it is just not okay.

"Despite being almost entirely inaccurate, editing out the most relevant information about my conversation with the parent (and making me look squirmy when they sprung it on me), believe it or not, there were still a few things about the segment that I found funny, so I guess I have to just laugh at it."

"But I didn’t find the implication that we’re consciously out to exploit kids funny at all (nor should Jon Stewart or Aasif Mandvi or the Daily Show Producers), and they could’ve shown this wasn't the case, if they'd wanted to, by simply showing my actual conversation with the parent on the phone! But the parent and I were "too reasonable" and weren’t swearing at each other enough!! To say that is our primary business purpose is insulting to the millions of players who have played for free, it’s insulting to (the very few) entrepreneurs who are building the new economy and creating jobs here in the US."

"The real lesson for me from being on the Daily Show? Welcome to show business – where nothing is quite what it seems, and heroes and villans are made in the script and the editing room, and have very little to do with real life."

Commenters offer some good advice: "don't let TV people hang around your office for 4 hours", and have a media rep present to moderate all activity.