Google News, Censorship or Responsible Journalism?

MSTCrow5429 writes to mention an article published by WorldNetDaily attacking the policies and actions of Google News. The author takes issue with the practice of removing sites that offer very frank discussions about radical Islam and terrorism as "hate speech." Several sites have complained about removal including The Jawa Report, MichNews, and most recently The New Media Journal. In the termination email to The New Media Journal Google cited several stories as objectionable in order to further explain the action.

Comments

Good on you google!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The new media journal is pushing the Mohamed is a paedophile meme:

He did not spare anyone; even 9 year old girls were not immune to his sexual wrath. Worshiping a sex-maniac and a child molester? I think NOT.

and has this charming tidbit that really reveals alot about the author's way of thinking

Is it really tacky of me to smile at the nightly scenes on TV showing Arab, Afghani and Pakistani Muslims bombing mosques and killing their Muslim brothers, sisters and children at a brisk pace because that's all they know how to do?

The Java report rehashes the incorrect (and two year old) rumour that Iran was introducing Nazi style clothing for non-moslems.

Mich News has appalling layout & a rather distasteful red, white, blue color scheme (why is he so obsessed with the french flag?)

In short, the blogs were not news sources, they were at best aggregators of chauvinistic news, at worst (like the first link), poorly written anti-moslem blogs, that just happen to tie in current events.

Frankly, I new google news was going to hit this sort of trouble as soon as they started indexing this blog.

Anyway, good on you google for not linking to hate as 'news' - the reaction of the moslem haters is as predictable as allways, crying about censorship, but frankly, everyone just thinks you're a bunch of whiners.

Re:Good on you google!

[Bohemoth2]

This all maybe inflammtory and hateful, but it is truthful about the reality of the situation. both sides have there slants represented on the web. It serves no purpose to censor one and not the other. Sadly most news reporting in the media today is biased in one way or the other.

For example, my newspaper kept referring to the may 1 protests as immigrant rights protests, when they really should have said illegal immigrant. rights protests. Little changes like that can make a big difference when read. I don't think many writers realize this though.

Re:Good on you google!

[jmorris42]

> I'm sorry, but masquerading hate speech as news does not make it news. Calling 'Mein Kampf' a semi-factual
> analysis of the growing inequities in post WW1 Germany does not make it news.

I'm sorry to see yet another product of public education. Mein Kampf sits on the shelves of every public library in the country, right beside Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto and Chainman Mao's Little Red Book. I'd also bet you can find the text of all three on Google if you try just a little. And yes serious historians DO study Mein Kampf in their studies of Pre War Germany. Hitler's arguments have the annoying reality that they were successful (remember, he WAS popularly elected... once.) so a study of his writings are pretty much required to gain a full understanding of his times.

You can't have an open debate and free inquiry while slapping a 'hate speech' label on all opposing views and banning from the public square. Protecting the right of Free Speech is at it's most important when it is something you don't like. I think Daily Kos is an almost perfect example of 'hate speech' but I would never move to bad it, would oppose Google dropping it from their index and in fact pass by and check up on 'the disloyal opposition' every couple of days. An echo chamber reflecting only your own positions isn't useful for learning new things.

Ah, the old double standard

[Engineer-Poet]

2) Criticism from within a culture is different to criticism from without - can you imagine if it'd been an arab who made piss christ?

They do a lot worse all the time. I'd like you to list one reaction even remotely similar to the staged protests over the Mohammed photos in the Jyllandsposten. Just one.

What you imply is that if a culture suppresses criticism from itself, it should be immune from all criticism. That is a double standard. Further, you imply that the validity of a critique depends not on what it says but on who says it. That's ad-hominem. It's standard leftist ideology, and it's amazing that any person can espouse it and claim to be educated; the cognitive dissonance required to hold it should break any functioning mind.

No, you're wrong.

[khasim]

One person's hate speech is another persons free speech.

No. It's all "speech". Whether it is "Free" or not depends upon the government you are under.

In the USofA, the "Free Speech" is about saying the government is wrong and not being arrested for saying that.

There is still "libel" and other other categories where "speech" is not "Free".

If Google is going to eliminate blogs as new sources when receiving complaints about their content they need to remove all of them.

You seem to have problems with this "category" concept.

A "blog" may contain actual news items. In which case, it is news.

Or a "blog" may contain nothing more than someone's bigotted rantings. In which case it is not news.

So claiming that all "blogs" should be removed from a news site simply because one sub-category was is ignorant.

Its always easy to find extreme examples to justify a position. Its just that too often those extreme examples overshadow all else in the discussion.

The "discussion" is about the "blogs" and how they do not contain any news. Just some bigot's rantings.

Google is a company, not a government.

You can still find those site via Google's web index. They just aren't listed as news sites on Google's news index. And, again, that is because they don't have any news, just some bigot's rantings.

And if you don't agree that those are the rantings of bigots, then go back and read the article that says Islam is a "cult" and a "false" religion. Then look at the stats for followers of each religion.

Yeah, I am dutch and ashamed

[SmallFurryCreature]

We got one dead politican, a death filmmaker/columnist, a columnist from the same newspaper beaten up and one politican fleeing the country.

Dutch policy seems to be to cover everything up and hope it goes away.

We hoped WW2 would pass us by too. That worked well.