Posted on 09/13/2009 5:04:16 PM PDT by do the dhue
I hope this was an accident, a fluke that can be rationally explained. If not, then our news is being censored beyond the wildest excesses of the Soviet Union. And Google, which has already stooped to co-operating with China in similar censorship, may be a co-conspirator.
On Saturday, September 12, 2009, President Barack Obama spoke before about 15, 000 people at a healthcare rally in Minneapolis. A few hours earlier, a crowd of between 70,000 and 1,200,000 citizens gathered in Washington, DC to protest excessive federal spending and intervention. I think we can safely conclude that any Tibetan monk or Zulu, blissfully unaware of American politics, would nonetheless conclude that the second event was at least as newsworthy as the first.
They'd be wrong. Between 2:00 and 4:00 PM PDT of that day, I monitored the Google News website, which in recent years has acquired some of the aura of omniscient impartiality that the New York Times once enjoyed. As of 3 PM, here's how the two stories were treated:
"Obama Takes to the Road to Promote Healthcare Reform": 14,488 news articles
"Tea Party Protesters March on Washington": 126 news articles
The first story remained at the top of the main page throughout. The second appeared on the main page from about 2:00 to 2:30 and then disappeared into the recesses of the "More Stories - U.S." page. Then it reappeared in the lower reaches of the main page at 3:45, as if the omission had caused some protest or embarrassment. As of 4 PM, Obama's speech was still on top with 15,891 news articles cited and the DC rally had again disappeared, after having peaked at 130 cited articles.
Am I being fussy or is there something strange about this hundred-to-one ratio of coverage? At the bottom of the Google News page, it says, "The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program." I wouldn't dare to disbelieve them but perhaps there's a glitch in their program. Or perhaps it's been hacked. Or perhaps they mixed up their US and Chinese programs.
Or perhaps Google is blameless. Perhaps that really was a fair sampling of news articles and the 100:1 ratio is an index of media bias. Or perhaps someone very influential managed to suppress the story about the DC rally.
In any case, I think an explanation is required. And I hope that some brave congressman will get up, on the Senate or House floor, and demand an explanation.
Update: Reader Robert notes the following:
From the United States:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&resnum=0&q=tiananmen%20square%20protest&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
From China:
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tiananmen+square+protest&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=
Computer program or not, Google censors their results to an enormous extent. Could it be happening here? Yes.
google has been pro-communist since it was founded.
As usual, those who benefit from Capitalism are the first to knock it — AFTER they squirrel away their money.
In mid July 2008 I watch in horror as google “disappeared” over half a million hits on “obama birth certificate”.
I use Bing now.
“As usual, those who benefit from Capitalism are the first to knock it — AFTER they squirrel away their money.”
You’re so right. And I’m so damn tired of it!
hey, even fox news is still saying 10s of thousands. we all know what the truth is
Google’s newspage is totally automated and reacts to the number of news stories. Blame the media for not covering the tea party. On the other hand, Google’s banner has ignored D-Day and the anniversary of 9/11 among other omissions such as Easter.
I don’t use GOOGLE for search - it keeps track of everything you look at and even deeper.
Doubt it.
They will have their dachas in the loveliest locations, never you worry.
WFTV.COM here in Orlando still hasn’t covered the protest in Washington.
If you go to their website now you will see something that says something similar to “Hundreds Protest Healthare”. What that article is about is a “protest” held here in Orlando that was organized by Democrat Congressman Alan Greyson.
And somehow WFTV deems this more newsworthy than the protests in the US capital which they have neither covered nor linked to an outside news source on the story.
no kidding ...those kids should be ashamed at their hubris...it’s appalling
is Bing any better NAV?
And their followers will soon find out there will none or very little for them as soon as they are boxed into meaningles lives.
r u sure google does not purge stories?
I amend my earlier post, Google says it’s newspage is totally automated. Who knows? Google is entrenched at the WH. Use Bing.
No surprise here.
Google employees have contributed $487,355 to Sen. Obama’s campaign and $20,600 to Sen. McCain’s as of Aug. 31 2008.
The surprise is that there was a mention at all!
Google, in particular Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are “in bed” with the Feds on several projects, most of which are classified.
I think Google News simply crawl the internet to find news. So, it depends on whether the news outlets out there cover the event or not. Not to defend them, as I’m aware about Google’s political persuasion, but I think in this case it really shows the problem with the MSM in general.
Automated to do what?
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