Slashdot Mirror
BBC Buys Google News Keywords In Kelly Case
foreign devil writes "BBC has purchased keywords related to coverage of the Hutton Inquiry in an attempt to direct all traffic to their special news coverage. This would be only moderately interesting, except the BBC is complicit in the death of Dr. Kelly and the 'sexing up' of the Iraq dossier. The article in the Guardian says this is coming out of the GBP 63.5m ad budget. I wonder how much it would cost them if someone, say, automated searching for those links on Google." It doesn't seem fair to pronounce the BBC complicit in Kelly's death (unless that's proven by the facts of the case), but it's certainly an interested party.
One could argue that the Beeb pushed Dr. Kelly to suicide, but calling them "complicit in ... the 'sexing up' of the Iraq dossier" is somewhat bizarre. Are we missing a relative clause here or what?
...except the BBC is complicit in the death of Dr. Kelly and the 'sexing up' of the Iraq dossier...
Actually, the BBC was citing Dr. Kelly to criticize the 'sexing up' done by the british government. Then the government revealed the name of Dr. Kelly as the source, leading to pressures on him. So I don't think the BBC is really complicit in his death and it's definitely haven't 'sexed up' the Iraq dossier.
Of course, I still find what they're doing with google questionable at best.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I hardly ever read the colored boxes on the right. They're more ads than anything. Getting results like 'Read the gravitational fields Ebook on Amazon.com' doesnt entice me to look to the right side of my screen. I'll read the normal results over the right-hand side results any day of the week, thank you.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
Calling The Sun a "newspaper" is being more than a little generous.
I wouldn't believe anything in that rag unless I could confirm it in about five other, indipendent, sources.
"BBC thinks palestinians who blow themselves (and innocent babies) are "freedom fighters""
history is written by the victors man. At one time a bunch of people hiding in the woods and sniping at officers was beyond reproach, and were the "terrorists" of their time. We here in the USA call them revolutionaries now, and revere them. During the civil war, the north took a radical step by attacking civilian and logistical targets instead of purely military ones. A move that would have been reviled had the north ended up losing, instead it's hailed as tactical genius.
Conventions of warfare go OUT THE WINDOW when you are faced with a militarial superior enemy. Calling palestinians freedom fighters is no more or less accurate than calling our american forefathers heroes.
Other information is there to be viewed but you dont have to click on the sponsored link, the option of where you want to follow up is up to you.
The danger is that the BBC is so large of a company and some feel that this move is not a sponsporship of events by their history division (for example) but rather to cull popular opinion to their spin of the story.
Let's keep in mind that patents are in place to keep lawyers employed and keep them litigating. -CatGrep
Yes...sniping at officers who are in uniform by other solider is acceptable.
Sniping at civilians isn't. Now if you are an irregular not in uniform and snipe and are caught, you can be summarily executed.
That's an accepted fact for the last...3-400 years.
Now during the American Revolution...very limited warcrimes were carried out by both sides as did irregular operations against other irregulars and against uniformed soldiers. Fellas like Nathan Hale were hung by the British for being soldiers out of uniform...thus a spy.
The North did carry out military operations against logistical targets in the war, however they did not attack civilian targets for the sake of attacking civilian targets, and the North isn't hailed for it's operations in the war...it's considered an agressor and in large parts of the country...they are considered war criminals...no matter how clean a campaign might have been.
Reading this article I'm surprised that The Guardian (very respected UK daily newspaper) have missed one of the more important aspects of the BBC (must highly respected news broadcaster in the world) buying Google search keywords related to the Hutton inquiry. This action will cause the BBC to appear as a link on any website mentioning the Hutton inquiry that uses Google advertising banners on its pages, not just on Google search results pages.
... Google is automatically directed to a paid-for link to BBC Online's own news coverage of the inquiry."
In taking this action, the BBC will be inexorably linked with the Hutton inquiry as a source of information, rather than having an major role in the events that have led to it.
I would also question the use of the phrases "buying up all internet search terms relating to the inquiry" and "anyone searching for "Hutton inquiry" or "Hutton report" on
The first of these phrases implies the BBC is attempting to prevent others from using these keywords by buying Google's entire stock. This is obviously false, as anybody can buy Google's keywords and there is an unlimited supply.
The second of these phrases states that uses will atuomatically be directed to the BBC Online site when searching for 'Hutton enquiry'. This is blatantly false. Instead, a link to the BBC Online coverage will be displayed amongst a separate list of clearly demarcated sponsored links.
Buying advertising to negate the effect of negative crticism is a well-established business practice for which The Guardian (and indeed all other media which provide advertising facilities) have long served as a platform for.
What's far worse than the implied misdirection by the BBC in The Guardian's article is the blantant misreporting of opinion as fact in the Slashdot headline. Stating that the BBC is 'complicit' in the death of Dr Kelly is factually incorrect, not to mention libellous in the extreme.
The BBC puts everything in quotes.
At the time of writing the following headlines on the BBC news page contain quotes:
Mydoom virus 'biggest in months'
Martha Stewart 'lied about tip'
'Several dead' in Baghdad blast
'Bribery' halts Kenya graft probe
Obviously the put those headlines in "scare quotes" to make them seem more suspicious!
With terrorist groups, there's no way to parlay, no way to set peace conditions. In the Civil War, when Robert E. Lee surrendered, the war was OVER. In the Revolutionary War, when the British pulled out, it was also over (at least until the British started enslaving American sailors to fight Napoleon, sparking the War of 1812). With terrorists, there's no victory or defeat, only eternal terror for both sides.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
It's especially sad when someone reads one piece of propaganda and goes psycho without considering the motives behind it. The Guardian hates the BBC, and they along with Rupert Murdoch have been trying to get the British government to shut down the BBCs great website, so that more people go to their services.
What exactly is wrong with advertising your side of the story. Most advertisers are interested parties, and the article made it sound like they were preventing other voices from being heard, which is ridiculous.
Finaly
"I wonder how much it would cost them if someone, say, automated searching for those links on Google."
Absolutely nothing.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Erm, no. They call people who blow themselves up, "suicide bombers". They call the militants, "militants". In Iraq, they call the insurgents, "insurgents". Compare to the completely unbiased and independent American media, who refer to all of those under the collective term, "terrorists".
Has it occured to you, that they might be using quotes because they are quoting someone?
The coverage of the Dr. Kelly affair was incredibly poor. That's a large part of the Hutton Inquiry, right?
However, I get the impression, sir, that you are simply part of the angry right complaining that the BBC is not biased to the right enough.
Yes, the war hawks called the BBC biased because it did not slavishly repeat the Pentagon line at the height of the war, as Fox/Sky, CNN, and MSGOP did. They aired both pro- and antiwar views, and for those who cannot tolerate the latter, that made them biased.
what was a difference of interpretation into worldwide controversy
Err no, what was a complete and utter load of bollocks that was presented as a fact. The 45 minute claim was a single sourced piece of information about battlefield weapons that the UK goverment led people to believe refered to long-range weapons.
It was pure and simple rubbish, if it had been in a company report then you'd be calling for them to be prosecuted for fraud.
The initial fact is not in doubt. Iraq had _no_ WMD that could be ready in 45 mins, and had no long range capabilities.
The BBC was not _wrong_ in its report.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It's a free market: advertising space is available to anyone, whether they have vested interests or are for/against an issue. Equally, anyone can buy television or newspaper space to do the same thing.
I don't see that there are any "rights" problems here ? If you had an opposing view, you too could have purchase keywords for the hutton case.
Irrespective of who purchased those keywords, Google is always going to serve up pageranked results for "objective" results, or return collective links to press coverage from google news.
If you have a problem, purchase keywords at other search engines. You can argue that Google has a dominant position and therefore subject to anti-trust concerns, but as it returns pageranked results, it's hard to see how this argument is sustainable.
The BBC advertising budget is not at risk here. Google Adwords pricing lets you set a daily budget and a cost per click. I also bet Google would be able to detect an automated hitting on those links and prevent it.
I had a quick look at their server today (28th, when the report is due out) and response time was good - checking them with Netcraft it looks like they are running Apache (probably on Linux underneath - though Netcraft is not always reliable on this point in my experience), and recently changed over to Akamai presumably for edge caching - which would explain the good response time.
Any Slashdotters involved with the technical side of the inquiry? I was really impressed by the evidence management system where everything submitted got scanned in and was available on screen to the witnesses and (mostly) on the website as well.
-- Nothing unusual happened today
Do you have any cites that support your accusations of the BBC?
What information can you point to that the BBC is known to be utterly biased? socialist?
Where is your direct proof that the BBC thinks that Palestinian suicide bombers are "freedom fighters"?
Where is your proof that the BBC is an overfunded club of liars?
You do not have any, that is why...you are only regurgitating other conservative pundits that also have no supporting proof of their rhetoric. Just like the one about NPR being some left wing biased news program.
"How ironic that your sig contains a quote by Sherman, who did exactly that in his famous "march to the sea"."
Ah, but he didn't. The popular understanding of Sherman's March to the Sea is that he raped and pillaged Georgia. He didn't. The Army attacked Confederate infrastructure while on the march, freed slaves and burned cotton and other goods the state depended on while knocking out communication (railroads and telegraph) while living off the land as they marched.
The living off the land by foraging was a time-honored tradition for an army it's just been made controversal during the March to the Sea.