Google News feeds politics and free speech
One of the topics I plan to steer clear of most of the time here is politics. I don’t want this site (essentially for my business), to be engulfed with national political, conservative, liberal, etc… debates. It doesn’t fit with the structure I have in mind. However, at the intersection of political debate and technology there is room to touch on the topic. I’ve found an article which brings Google News into this mix.
In a Frontpage magazine article, they report that Google News will soon include articles from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Frontpagemag (a conservative site run by David Horowitz), describes ISM as “an affiliate of the anarchist/communist wing of the PLO”.(Palestenian Liberation Organization). ISM claims to be a neutral peace group.
Now, if we were in a situation where there was one company controlling content and news aggregation for the vast majority of net viewers, the key question would be what critiria that organization uses to choose who is “worthy” of being included in their news feeds. But, we live in an age of alternative media. Where a news story can break and be picked apart in a thousand blogs before bedtime. Truth usually get’s winnowed out from reports that aren’t quite truthful. In some cases the truth is distorted a bit more along the way, but ultimately “peer review” helps to improve the accuracy of reporting.
This is exactly what concerns me of one company controlling the internet, (Ballmer saying MSN will win the war of the internet.) If one company alone controlled the majority of search, news aggregation, etc… What if by their whim they decided a certain news network was not a legitimate news network, but a propagandist group and banned them from news feeds, ads and search results. Or maybe a newspaper would be a target for bad reviews of a Microsoft product? Constitutional complaints of infringing on free speech would not apply, that is only applicable to Government restrictions on free speech. Businesses can choose to do what they like.
Newspapers used to have a custom of identifying the political leanings of their editorial board. That is something that I wish sometimes would come back into vogue, but it is ultimately up to the reader to decide. These days news is reported from enough sources that we have no excuses for relying on just one outlet for our information about the world around us. As long as we have the choice of “voting with our feet” or our eyes as the case may be, we can decide where the biases lay.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Related Posts - Good writeup on patents and standards There is a good posting at the zdnet blogs talking about proprietary standards and why they are not a good thing in comparison to open standards. The talk specifically mentions Microsoft Word documents as an example of a de facto Proprietary standard and then goes on into a current example......
- Keeping up with news through RSS feeds. Most of the visitors to this site already know about this, but I thought it might be worth an article. I remember an application years ago (1993?) that would let you setup multiple news sources and when the program loaded it would go, skim their sites and present you the......
- New Orleans Datacenter STILL up and running Of course the thoughts and prayers of the nation and indeed the world are with those in the Gulf Coast area of the U.S. and particularly the situation in New Orleans. I ran across an amazing story of a webhost that is based in New Orleans and their datacenter is......
Related Websites - Powerful SEO Procedures To generally be successful in SEO link building, here are a few strategies that can be done. The process could be distinct but the result will be excellent. You can apply one of these techniques and acquire wonderful result after some time. Or you can look for the best......
- The Virtual Assistants As Well As The Little Web Hosting Service Which Shouldn't Be The virtual assistants ask: Is bigger far better? People have their very own opinion regarding that, which includes web hosting companies. They are saying it is. This is exactly why whenever you take a look at their hosting packages, the feature list goes on and on and on. You would......
- Book It BookIt.com® is an online travel company determined and dedicated to becoming the leader in providing travelers with the most intuitive online booking experience full of relevant information, helpful guides and travel tips. As a web-based company, we obviously know the value of the internet - our very livelihood depends......
Similar Posts
- Google puts historical articles online, searchable
- Google not talking to cnet?
- Google now officially giving news feeds
- Court allows blocking of emails by Public University
- Google news rss feeds update