Is Google News Your Best Online News Service? 10 Questions To Verify
Google News Credibility
Searching for reliable and objective news items is becoming more and
more difficult as each days goes by.
You either have to rely on independent news sources outside of the
mainstream media, or you do risk of being flooded with a prep-packaged
bulk of news stories serving specific interests and agendas but scarcely
verified and questioned by the very information guardians working for us
in the news industry.
Google and other online services have apparently helped this problem
by becoming aggregators of many and different news sources and allowing
individuals to read and find stories of interests without having to
depend on a unique source.
But their contribution to levelling and opening up Internet users to
a more objective kind of reporting and news publishing maybe deeply
ill-fated unless we all get to be informed about a few critical details
relevant to how these information giants assemble and deliver news items
to us.
In its Google News (Beta) page, Google management states:
"The headlines on the Google News homepage are selected entirely by a
computer algorithm, based on many factors including how often and on
what sites a story appears elsewhere on the web...
...Google News relies in a similar fashion on the editorial judgment
of online news organizations to determine which stories are most
deserving of inclusion and prominence on the Google News page."
http://news.google.com/
Google goes on to state: "Google News is highly unusual in that it
offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without
human intervention.".
But who wrote the algorithms?
Who selected the news sources?
Who decided how to rank and value each?
I believe that Google needs to answer a few basic questions to ensure
that the perception of what they are providing does indeed match what
they do deliver.
Who are the elected online news organizations that Google has
selected? Should we know?
Google owes us a bit more transparency about the how it automatically
prepares the Google News page.
As Google proudly claims that it provides and objective and
independent view on global news by continuously crawling over 4,500 news
sources worldwide, it would be appropriate, if not altogether due, to
look a bit more in detail at how this ambitious and fascinating task is
achieved.
10 Questions For Google News
1) Which are the news sources being crawled? Can this be made public?
Why keep it a secret?
2) Is there a balance being stroke between the news sources owned by
American-Western interests and other news originators?
3) How much are news sources from non Western countries covered?
4) Are there at least one or two news sources included for each and
every nation on this planet?
5) How many of the news sources listed in:
70
Free, Alternative and Independent Online News Sources
and
at
"Look
Beyond The Networks For News On The Iraq Conflict"
are included
in Google News crawl?
(Not that I represent any kind of master
reference, but I guess that if you want to portray "world news" from an
objective viewpoint, you need indeed to widen a bit the sources you
include in your gathering effort).
6) What are the relevancy criteria utilized?
7) In the ideas of its developers is Google News to be perceived as a
mirror of what the mainstream US news media
reports, or is it indeed an attempt to provide a more objective and
balanced look at world news with no particular preference?
8) If Google has taken a well deserved seat for being a quality,
ethical and true-to-the-facts search engine, why does its News service
not reflect this approach as well?
9) How can objective news reporting be based on the notion that the
more exposure a news item has the more it should rise to the top of
news? If this approach is gradually sold as an intelligent approach then
we will have more and more news at the mercy of those who can pay more
to have greater visibility, reach and attention. While that may have
been the case for a while already across all mainstream news outlets,
Google has all the right and technology to offer us an effective
alternative. Why isn't it doing so?
10) According to modern journalism principles and best practices the
best news reporting is the one that provides as many sides and views to
the story, with factual references and witnesses, as possible. Is Google
providing only the news from the strongest or is it mathematically
balancing who has power to scream with whom has actual alternative facts
and independent views to share?
Google world famous Web index powering its main search facility is
not editorially managed and filtered. If you have a page of content out
there and some other Web site links to you, your page is basically
"in".
On the other hand, for news to be news on Google, either your
newspaper has been lucky enough to have been selected among the elected
ones or you may just forget about objective reporting. Or am I
wrong?
What is missing, is what Google tentatively and timidly describes
when saying: "While the sources of the news vary in perspective and
editorial approach, their selection for inclusion is done without regard
to political viewpoint or ideology. While this may lead to some
occasionally unusual and contradictory groupings, it is exactly this
variety that makes Google News a valuable source of information on the
important issues of the day". Yes, I wish that was indeed and more what
Google offered me. But the more I read Google news the more I realize
how much more I need to be aware and questioning of the objective and
diversified world reporting they are supposed to represent.
While awaiting Google response.
(You can submit your doubts to Google as well by emailing them at: news-feedback@google.com)
Example: If we were to look and to believe at what is hinted and
shown on the short articles entitled "The Photographs Tell The
Story"
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm)
and "A Tale Of Two Photos"
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm),
then
we would have to conclude that much of the news we have been looking at
may have not really been a factual portrait of what was really
happening.
I think this is a worthwhile consideration to make.
You can read the original
post here.
Google responded:
"Hi,
thank you very much for taking the time to write Google. While we are
not able to share the full list of 4500 news sources at this time, we
are accepting nominations for inclusion. If you believe a source you
value is not already a part of Google News, feel free to submit it to us
by sending a note to news-feedback@google.com. We
are constantly adding to our list and would be happy to consider your
suggestions.
The headlines on the Google News Search homepage are selected
entirely by a mathematical algorithm, based on many factors including
how often and where a story appear elsewhere on the web. For competitive
reasons, we do not reveal the details of how the Google algorithms
work."
Regards,
The Google Team
Posted on April 30, 2003 at 07:14 PM
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Comments
I use Google News all the time. However, I believe that it is
slanted toward a liberal bias in the way it chooses it's postings,
whether done by algorithm. Quite often an essay or editorial is
listed as the lead article on the front page. That is not news,
that's opinion. I have rarely if ever seen a lead editorial come
from a conservative slant. Lead editorials are almost always
negative toward the current administration or other conservative
views.
I believe that an online news service such as google should avoid
all editorials and stick to the news.
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