May 25, 2006

Google News Bias and The Jawa Report

It used to be that when I searched "Jawa" on Google News, I'd get a mix of our own posts with financial reports coming out of Indonesia--except, of course, for those 6 months in which we were banished from Google News for "hate speech", that is. Now, it's pretty much about The Jawa Report.

For instance:

Is Left-Leaning Google Censoring Right-Leaning Websites?

Unlike most of the articles coming out about The Jawa Report recently, I actually engaged in an e-mail conversation with the author of the above story, Noel Shephard. You can check out his ongoing investigation into Google News here.

Does Google News systematically discriminate against right-leanig websites? My gut feeling says that does, but this is based on anecdotal evidence so I am willing to change that opinion if a more systematic study was done.

The explanation could be as mundane as Muslims being more prone to calling anything they deem offensive as 'hate speech' and Google being oversensitive.

Of course, the 'South Park Mohammed cartoon' theory might come into play here: Google is just afraid Muslims. But that wouldn't explain why The Jawa Report was dropped from Google News for a time since that happened before the Mohammed cartoon violence.

Then again, it may be that low-level Google employees are making these decisions with some amount of discretion. Whenever discretion is involved, our own biases come into play. What a person on the Left and a person on the Right deem offensive is completely subjective and is framed by our worldviews.

This last explanation is supported by the fact that Google News did eventually reinstate The Jawa Report as a provider. Someone up the chain-of-command eventually took a look at the 'hate speech' allegations and decided they were silly.

Then again, it could be that we just complained louder than whoever it was that was complaining about 'hate speech'. Corporate behavior can often be explained as simply taking the path of least resistance.

Hopefully, The New Media Journal and MichNews will be reinstated after a second review. But I'd start complaining loudly to Google News just to make sure.

UPDATE: A reader who wishes to remain anonymous e-mails this:

Data point for Google News: A couple of months ago I realized the American Spectator Online wasn't on Google News and I wrote off to request they add it. I specifically identified it as having a conservative slant. They reviewed and added it in about a week. No I suppose the AmSpec has more name recognition than do most blogs, but there was one case where a
right-leaning news source was added without any trouble...

And I know the plural of "anecdote" is not really "data".