Does Google Censor Chinese News?

mOoZik writes "A story carried by New Scientist suggests that Google might be playing into the hands of the Chinese government by blocking certain news stories which may be deeded inappropriate. Some users recently reported that Google's Chinese news search returned different results depending when they searched using a computer based outside of China. The claims were substantiated by researchers who connected to computers inside the country. Read on and decide for yourself."

Comments

Maybe not censor but

[forgotten_my_nick]

But certainly the news portal itself seems either biased, or US news really is that bad.

I have noticed if I search for a story I will find it, but the google portal does give a good indication of what the US is seeing.

For example Bushes war records. You check the news/search engine all you find is about the CBS documents.

However if you were to dig more you would find that a judge has ordered the release of the originals (ref: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6022115/).

I've wondered if this is a new system of polluting the news on the net. As it is harder to control stories but easy to bury them.

I'd be surprised if they didn't

[r6144]

As a Chinese in China, this is hardly a surprise. Considering that Google news is accessible in China, while most foreign news sites such as CNN and BBC are blocked, I'd be very surprised if Google news are allowed to serve anything censored by the authority to those in China.

Note that I don't think this is right, and the current internet censorship really sucks, neither does it work --- new sites containing western political views spring up every day and they can't censor them one by one. The recent efforts against porn sites are even more laughable, considering that it is still hard to find a news site in China that does not contain sexual content deemed inappropriate for children by most parents. Hopefully some time in the future they will admit that such efforts are useless and use the money on places that really need them (such as some poor rural areas).

Re:rephrase

[Nogami_Saeko]

Well, the obvious solution is that they should be MARKING what they're censoring so people know that "something" was censored, even if they can't see it. When they return results for searches, or display news stories, they should just be returning a "censored" link that goes to a page explaining why they are unable to provide the content.

Kind of like their old policy on takedown notices.

Journalists used to do the same thing before they sold-out to the government. For eaxmple, if they were in a war situation and the government censored pieces of their footage, they'd just broadcast black on-air so that viewers knew SOMETHING was being withheld from them by the government and they could start asking questions.

But journalists have become the pawns and puppets of government now, and rather than holding them accountable, they're just climbing into bed with them. Makes me sick.

N.