Google Blogoscoped

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Google Checking Nationalist Sites

According to German Netzeitung, who spoke to Stefan Keuchel of Google Germany, Google is pondering whether to keep two nationalist Google News sources. The first source is the racist National Vanguard, as previously reported. The second source is the German National-Zeitung, which is listed as “Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung” in Google News Germany. It is certainly a right-wing source (“out with criminal foreigners”), though not as radical as National Vanguard.

De.internet.com, another German news source, also talked to Google’s Keuchel, who said: “We received a lot of emails in the US from people who thought it wasn’t too great ’National Vanguard’ is included.” But Google itself was politically neutral and wanted to offer its readers information from a variety of different sources. Keuchel continued to say: “We are respecting existing laws. If something turns out to be illegal, it will be immediately removed.”

HonestReporting.com, in the meantime, complains about the inclusion of news source Jihad Unspun into Google News. HonestReporting, itself a Google News source, says Jihad Unspun is “a propagandist website that glorifies Islamist terror, publishes highly anti-Semitic material, and regularly demonizes the State of Israel. Despite hundreds of complaints from HR subscribers over the past year, Jihad Unspun remains syndicated on GoogleNews, and its articles often appear prominently on searches for Israel-related topics.”

BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis says “it’s high time we get transparency from GoogleNews,” urging Google to release a complete list of their news sources, and later on writes, “If Google isn’t transparent, let’s report on Google.”

I asked Google on their stance. Google told me “Google News does not allow hate content. If we are made aware of articles that include hate content, we will remove them.”

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