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Online Journalism News

Google dumps news sites after "hate" complaints

Posted: 31/05/06 By: Robert Andrews
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Three right-leaning US news websites have been delisted from Google News for pedalling "hate speech".

The New Media Journal, The Jawa Report and MichNews were dumped from the search engine's news aggregator portal following a review of stories prompted by complaints.

In a notice sent to New Media Journal editor Frank Salvato, Google flagged up opinion pieces published by the site that criticised Islamic behaviour.

"We received numerous reports about hate content on your site and, after reviewing these reports, decided to remove your site from Google News," the company wrote. "We do not allow articles and sources expressly promoting hate speech viewpoints in Google News."

Jawa Report and MichNews received similar notices earlier.

Mr Salvato responded by saying Google had "decided to enter the political fray by openly manipulating their system's search results and [had] begun the practice of steering users away from any political content at odds with their own political agenda". The move sparked ire amongst conservative commentators, who noted the California-based website has been a donor to the Democrat party.

The inventor of Google News, which carries 10,000 news sources, on Monday told a gathering of international editors that technology will radically reinvent journalism but will not alter its fundamental principles.

Speaking at the International Press Institute's congress meeting, Krishna Bharat, the engineer who started the site in 2002 and founded Google's Indian research labs, was quoted as saying: "With each previous new technology, the face of journalism changed and we reinvented ourselves.

"But the heart of journalism - the editorial process, editorial objectivity and values - did not change. Our industry's methods of information collection and dissemination will change but not core editorial practices."