Google News and the current world situation

[salson]

Hello.

Does anybody know how Google is to cover the attack on Iraq? Are they to include any news section on the results (as on Sep 11th)?

[weblamer2]

You also have to consider if certain non US and non Euro news papers are indeed 'news'. After all many papers in the middle east and other areas are state run. they are not really newspapers, they are government statements and opinions formated to 'look' like newspapers. In many countries there is no freedom of the press.

I wish the google news could tell you if the page you were looking at was a true journalist site, or if it was just some governemnt progaganda page.

Instead it lumps them all together.

[xbase234]

smallwebguy -

The reason you see the same newscopy is because much of it is syndicated content from AP, Reuters, etc.

Maybe they can start zapping news site PR due to duplicate content, and push the more unique and independent content up a bit.

This is where I would really like to see the algo shake things up, i.e. balanced news presentation. It would truly be a new paradigm in news media, if it isn't already.

[deadlyvine]

Just so we know, Google may be non-biased- but if the US government is pulling stuff like this, understand that it will be very difficult to acquire independent, non-US biased reporting.

The Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq, according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie. In an interview with Irish radio, Ms. Adie said that questioned about the consequences of such potentially fatal actions, a senior Pentagon officer had said: "Who cares.. ..They've been warned."

According to Ms. Adie, who twelve years ago covered the last Gulf War, the Pentagon attitude is: "entirely hostile to the the free spread of information."

But relax, say, it's not us who's dying right? Return to your jobs, and remember dissent is unnatural!

[yetanotheruser]

Instead it lumps them all together....

....in the hope that we can make up our mind what is real and what is not I'd guess..

fire on ... satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq

IMVHO I think that censourship and propaganda are overated next to the sensationalism that drives mass-media in the UK at least..

I do think that google-news has a something very interesting to offer.. I just wonder whether you guys think that it is providing or even trying to provide a particularily impartial view of the world?

I 'spose it is great for Sci-Tech, Sports, Health news where there is less difference of opinion?

ATB, :)

[john316]

Google spiders news sites and links to articles it finds.

It doesn't report the news, write the news, make commentay on the news or make news out of the news...how in the world could it be biased?

In the real world it might be like making a claim that the local newsstand is biased. A bit silly.

[FourDegreez]

weblamer2, I often wonder whether some of our own US media outlets are anything more than "government propaganda."

[weblamer2]

"weblamer2, I often wonder whether some of our own US media outlets are anything more than "government propaganda."

Simple, just find out how many US reporters have been thrown into meat grinding machines for reporting something they should not have.

Get real.

[heini]

>propaganda
That's obviously all in the eye of the beholder. The great thing about a simple news aggregator is it's much less prone to be totally biased than a editorial news site.
Optimistically something like Google News makes it harder to see only one side. In a way Google News, or the blogging scene, is what the internet was made for.
Web users clearly have an advantage concerning the the effortless availability of worldwide information.

[EBear]

An interesting and intelligent thread on a pertinent issue. I agree wholeheartedly with GGs first comment about getting "to the heart of an issue". My father was a journalist and told me many times as a kid "If you want to know the truth about something, don't read it in the paper. Read it in all the papers." He taught me the truth of this by bringing home every Monday the press reports of the football match we'd been to see that weekend. Even an eleven year old could quickly identify which reporters were pro or anti our team and I learnt how an editorial hand works long before I was reading the front pages. The best lesson, and gift, he ever gave me.

I heard that Kate Adie interview on RTE Radio. I think it was last Sunday week. It was quite worrying.

An article in the Irish Times this week tried to identify where the PR campaign to get a second UN resolution had gone wrong. One cause it identified was that the US and UK administrations had failed to realise that in recent years the media machine had moved outside their control, with many major satellite and online networks no longer being western-based, as against the CNN/BBC/Sky monopoly of the first Gulf War.

As things develop, it would be useful if folks posted here news sites that they find to be particularly valuable and trustworthy in giving a balanced, or indeed an alternative, view of things for those of us in the West. These are the times that I truly love the Net.

That said, I still believe the big guns (no pun intended ;)) have the professional integrity to report to the best of their ability on their side of the story.

[heini]

One thing many members here, being native english speakers, probably don't really realize is the fact Google only indexes english speaking news so far.
It's news sources from all over the world,, but spanish, japanese, chinese, russian, whatever.

Googleguy, any plans in the plex to expand the service to incorporate more languages?

[Stefan]

Great point, heini. In the current situation, with so many of the english news sites based in the US, UK, and Oz, it's a long way from being a representative snapshot of the world press and international opinion.

Yeah GG, when might it expand beyond the english-speaking media?

[heini]

Looking at the top stories I see quite a few english versions from international sources, arabian, asian, european, so I don't feel it's biased.

My point is more about reaching out to larger, truly worldwide audiences.

[Stefan]

I just had a look at the World news page... almost all of the headline sources were US, UK press, with the SMH from Sydney, except for The Hindu. Manila and Korea are buried down in there if you look closely. I don't see much else. I doubt if anyone realies on it for all their info, so what the hec...

Looked again, good old Radio Netherlands showed up.

[georgeek]

What I find very misleading with Google News, now that I have been looking at it more than once a day, is the time stamp.

For example:

Baghdad faces allied bombardment
icWales - 5 minutes ago

I have to keep reminding myself that the event wasn't 5 minutes ago it was just picked up by Google 5 minutes ago.

Or is it just me? :)

[heini]

That's the way it works, George. I'm having that problem with ATW news search, which is my fav service. It's a pure search service, no aggregation on a page like Google's. The great forte of ATW is they index news sources from languages other than english.

Anyway, ATW is customizable to return only stories indexed the last three, or six or twelve hours. Very handy, but still you get the same stories over and over again, because they are freshly indexed.

[TheDave]

I find a good way to use google news is to actually search for something then sort by date. You can then pick through the snippets and look where they came from.

[GoogleGuy]

Currently, Google News indexes only sites in English. I agree that non-English sources are important to add, but wouldn't be surprised if that still took a little while. But I'm sure that it is on our todo list. :)

[Chuma]

Has anyone else been getting 502 errors from Google News?

Some of the pictures aren't loading either.

I would assume that this would be a problem with the news sites it is sourcing material from though as they would be getting overloaded.

Thanks.

[Visit Thailand]

I do not get errors with Google News but often get the IHT sending me to a different story than the one Google was offering.

[andye]

The internationalism of the coverage is time sensitive, presumably because most of the coverage is from print media.

For example, now (10am UK time), both the top two stories are about "British troops" - in the evening most of the coverage will likely be US-based.

Andy.

[europeforvisitors]

Looking at the top stories I see quite a few english versions from international sources, arabian, asian, european, so I don't feel it's biased.

I think Google News is a fantastic resource. If it hadn't been for a Google News link to a SYDNEY MORNING HERALD article this morning, I wouldn't have known that the U.S. is napalm in Iraq (or, for that matter, that the U.S. isn't a signator to a 1980 international agreement prohibiting the use of such "area weapons").

To those of us who remember the controversy over napalm during the Vietnam war, this is very significant piece of information...yet I haven't even seen it mentioned in the leading U.S. news media. I certainly wouldn't have been browsing the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD in the normal scheme of things, so I owe a big "thank you" to Google for pointing me to an important story that I would have missed if it hadn't been for Google News.

[Tapolyai]

Charter:

Politics and Religion
We have people from all over the world. Different systems of government and various religions. Please leave the political and religious discussions for elsewhere.

[rfgdxm1]

Google is now offering news. Whether or not Google is doing unbiased offering of news is relevant to this forum. Truth is independent of politics. Whether I approve or disapprove of anything the US does is inappropriate for this forum. However, whether or not Google News reports what the US does is.

[Tapolyai]

Please define "unbiased", "relevant", "truth" and "independent" in an objective way.

I was really biting my lips on this. I do not want to get into verbal jousting over what is, and isn't relevant, but several posts are clearly subjective, and politically motivated.

I think GoogleGuy gave a clear technical picture - The system is using statistics on which news to display in what particular order, and it only tracks English based news sources. As to which news sources, most likely the ones that allow it for free, or for a nominal fee. Am I close GoogleGuy?

Any other comments, such as the Kate Adie interview, suggestions that news is government propaganda, the Pentagon attitude, etc. etc. Do you wish me to go on?

You are discussing the news sources and the news itself, and how it is "slanted" when it does not agree with your point of view. THAT has nothing to do with Google News.

Clearly I am in the minority.

[Stefan]

True rfgdxm1.

And anyway, europeforvisitor's post was about how unbiased it is, (although I have to say you get a wider view by reading the French or Spanish press too - wish I knew some German).

[rfgdxm1]

From what I have seen, Google News seems unbiased. Googleguy posted here that this was all done by automation. I see nothing to suggest that this is not the case. Google appears to me to be offering news from a diverse number of sources around the world.

[Stefan]

I didn't mean to suggest that it's intentionally biased; it certainly appears to be totally automated. I use it often now, but I look forward to the day when it goes multilingual.

[edited by: Stefan at 4:51 am (utc) on Mar. 22, 2003]

[chiyo]

Even if something is automated, it is still very subject to bias - in this case with the selection of the news sources themselves. Unless the ranking is done soley on "link" popularity (extremely difficult i would say in this case where items are generated on the fly, unless they are based on PR of each sourse), they will have to have some algo which needed himan intervention to code which necessarily involves some value judgements.

I find Google NEws one of the broadest in terms of courses which makes it great, but its impossible to be obkective and unbiased. We are all a product of our upbringing and culture, assumptions and knowledge we are exposed to. Google too.

[rfgdxm1]

Obviously chiyo if Google had wanted to, they could have designed Google News with intentional bias. In this case it would be to favor the news services of one side or the other. It doesn't look to me like there is any bias. Through Google I can get news on this conflict from whatever continent I choose quite easily. One of the things that I love about the Internet is that by its very nature it really is impossible to censor. Truly odd because it was designed by the US military as a communications network that could survive a large scale attack, and get information through. A strange artifact of this is that it now allows people on a planetary scale to get information from all over the world. The Internet of the 21st century is what shortwave radio was decades ago. Much better in fact, as it takes little investment to communicate worldwide on the Internet. I am quite pleased at the moment by Google News, and what it delivers.

[Stefan]

Just so I don't leave the wrong impression from post #55...

And anyway, europeforvisitor's post was about how unbiased it is,

what I meant to say was that I thought #51 was within the bounds of the debate, didn't mean to imply that Google News is biased.