Google News Punting Conservatives

The NewsBusters website has reported on another instance of a website being booted from the sources used by Google News. All three sites had examples of "hate speech" cited by the noted how the examples in all three instances were of reports critical of radical Islam and its ties to terrorism. Google claimed in an email to the The Jawa Report and Little Green Footballs have both taken Google to task for the bannings. From NewsBusters: Yet, in the current instance, what is indeed odd is that some of the supposedly offensive content is still available at Google News even if some of the publishers aren't. As such, the three articles that appalled Google News to an extent that necessitated ties between it and The New Media Journal be severed can still be found at other sites by accessing Google News. That doesn't make much sense, does it? And from Little Green Footballs: I think the idea that Google News excludes conservative sites, while probably true, is only a small part of the problem. The real pattern is that the people who pick sites to be included in the index of Google News are biased against sites that are known for being critical of Islam. They definitely do not purge sites from their news index for Islamic supremacism and jihad ideology much more virulent and hateful than you'll find at any site mentioned in the Newsbusters article. Two quick examples: Al-Manar Google News definitely appears to have made some kind of dramatic change to its selection algorithms around July 2005. Since that time, news sites with high PageRank scores routinely push lower rated sites off the Google News front page when an assortment of sites report on the same story. That's a noticeable contrast to previous iterations of Google News, which seem to have been much more even-handed in displaying small and large site stories on issues of the day. Tag: Add to DiggThis | Furl Bookmark murdok: David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.