Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatofish | Hacker News Reader

That's nothing, you should see what Google does to conservative news. Google is a pretty big shill for the Democratic party, has a former exec in the West Wing, and has been caught repeatedly spiking stories in their news site that are critical of the left.

Also not sure I'd call this an extremist group. Ideological group perhaps, but extremist? Sure some of the members cited were bad apples (stalking, etc.), but yeah this is pure ideological polemics. When you have the the majority of mainstream media shilling for the left, one can't really blame the right for trying to regain some ground.

View on HN

This Google? The one with Jewish co-founders?

"The anti-Semitic web site “Jew Watch” appeared prominently in Google results for searches on the term “Jew,” prompting some Jewish groups to demand that Google remove the defamatory site from the top of its listings. Google refused."

http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/2007/2007-02/200702-BrinF...

Sorry, could you cite where Google has been caught "spiking stories in their news site that are critical of the left"? I'm deeply interested in censorship and feel that this would be a pretty big story.

Well, obviously it got buried by the Google/Digg/MSM liberal cabal.

How would it be a big story? Fox "spikes" stories that aren't even true, and are critical to the right every day. A lot of it ends up as fodder for the Daily Show.

Because Google's job is to help you find what you are looking for, not provide you with an editorialized curation of information. Fox News, or any other major network for that matter, is not obligated to provide you with unedited information. Their express role is curation.

Are you specifically referring to the Taliban-trained monkey soldiers, motivated by bananas and peanuts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buoVwM1pQEs&feature=relat...

The bit about American media shilling for the left is quite a funny troll.

Admittedly I might be wrong as I don't live in that country, but American media and politics seems to consist of the right and the further right.

As a Canadian living in the US I'm constantly amused at the left/right divide here. Left wing politics in this country would, in any other western nation, be considered centrist (if not a little to the right), and right-wing politics here would be fairly extreme right in most other places.

The right-wing is well-entrenched, so 'progressive' is not always that progressive. You have to give up a little ground to avoid looking psycho.

On the other hand, America is much more statist/socialistic in some regards than they like to admit.

E.g. the state gives lots of support for home ownership, including government sponsored mortgage guarantees. Or the power of all those crazy unions. Nominally more social-democratic Germany or Scandinavia look tame by comparison on those aspects.

"E.g. the state gives lots of support for home ownership, including government sponsored mortgage guarantees. Or the power of all those crazy unions. "

Both of which has bankrupted many states..and the auto industry (union power).

Um... A quick Google reveals:

Union membership as percent of workforce in: Sweden: 78.0% (2003) United States: 12.0% (2006)

I don't think you have proper appreciation of the historical power of the unions in Swedish politics. In comparison, the U.S. unions are a fringe.

I was not talking about the membership numbers. The Economist recently ran some quotes contrasting a Swedish union boss with nominally centre-right Sarkozy.

Anyway, just retract my claim about Sweden. I don't know nearly enough about it.

But I know that in Germany unions are in general quite business friendly, and not nearly as inflexible and insisting on entitlement as, say, the UAW was portrayed in what I read.

When people in the US talk about liberal media bias, the frame of reference is the average US voter's leanings. By that standard, dominant news sources (the incumbents, the ones considered most credible) are inarguably left biased. Some ridiculously high percentage of newspaper reporters, like 90%, vote for the Democrat (or other third party left leaning candidate) in every election. While this particular point isn't proof of bias necessarily, if we were to establish that Fox News' reporting staff voted 90% for the Republican, I feel confident it would be shouted from the rooftops in the online circles I run in.

Neither a Democrat nor Republican, but find the ongoing pretense by many otherwise brilliant people that the dominant US media isn't left biased to be an incredibly silly rationalization.

How are dominant news sources liberal when they were notoriously non-critical of the Bush administration's war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan up until Iraq was in the midst of a civil war (Which the "liberal" media was so kind as to refer to it as "sectarian violence"). The New York Times and NPR even refused to use the word torture to describe water boarding - despite the fact that if you dug into their archives they certainly called it torture when it was done to Americans by the Japanese during WWII.

The only issues where I'd say the news media is genuinely more liberal than the average American is gun control, and I'd say that has more to do with the fact that just about every person in the news media lives and/or works in a major City where gun violence is a problem. Considering gun control hasn't been a major platform issue of the Democratic party since the mid 90's, and is of little interest to the modern progressive/liberal movement (they are far more concerned with social and economic matters), it's hardly fair to classify them as across-the-board liberals.

Unfortunately, our perception of bias is heavily influenced by our personal biases. My recollection of the Bush years was very different, the anti-Bush sentiment are much more prominent in my mind.

It would be an interesting technology project or site. Do a sentiment analysis of major media sources. Search for how often a particular phrase is used. e.g.

Immigration: "Illegal Alien" or "Undocumented Worker"

Abortion: "Pro-Life" or "Anti-Abortion"

Something that could update in real time. It is unavoidable that every news site will have some slant, but an objective number based on rational criteria would be a good tool ala the nutrition facts labels on food packages.

I think Stephen Colbert said it best: reality has a liberal bias.

Personally I don't find these kind of statements that useful. I think it would be more accurate (and hopefully cause less instinctual defensiveness) to say that the politics in the US is extreme right vs center right, so one should expect most educated people to gravitate to the true middle, which puts them on the US "left".

Well said. Seems like I remember a while back (several election cycles) they did a poll not on how reporters voted but on who they donated money to. Where something like 90% of most media organizations reporters/staff/etc donated to liberal candidates, at Fox News only 75% donated to liberal candidates.

Do you have a cite for that? I couldn't find anything googling quickly and it sounds awfully suspicious.

In any event, I'm not sure it means much: most news organizations operate out of major cities, and major cities tend to have more liberal populations. If it was economically feasible to start a world-class news organization in a rural part of the Bible-belt, things might be different, but apparently it is not.

Sorry I don't. This was quite some time ago, like maybe Clinton's first term. It was probably something I read in print rather than online.

I don't generally downvote on HN - but you've made a grave claim against Google, and as the accuser you need to provide corroboration for your (very serious) accusations.

This one is a Poe's Law for me (that is to say, I can't tell if it's serious or satirical).

The article is coming true! Look, this comment was telling me new things that I didn't know about google and what's happened? It's been censored from me by people (no doubt some sort of google maffia) "burying" it.

Can see all the Google shills came out to downvote me, but nobody bothered to refute my comment on the grounds. No surprises there.

For those who didn't bother to look: http://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2010/04/20/goog...

And here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/05/is_leftleaning_google...

I'm not going to say anything about how dubious your sources are, but I will address a couple things:

1) Blogs are not inherently "news". Ergo, they should not always be put into a news feed.

2) The blogs in question were removed because of objectionable content. Which, after reading a couple of articles on one of the sites mentioned, seems totally reasonable. The reason it's OK to remove these from the Google News feed is because it's not news. It's a few paranoid people talking about how dangerous RADICAL ISLAM is.

This is not a "liberal bias". This is an attempt to have a news feed that contains news. Not libel. Not hate speech.

"1) Blogs are not inherently "news". Ergo, they should not always be put into a news feed."

Here is something I just found on the google news feed: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-20012891-10391698.html

This isn't news either, yet it's still there

"The blogs in question were removed because of objectionable content. Which, after reading a couple of articles on one of the sites mentioned, seems totally reasonable. The reason it's OK to remove these from the Google News feed is because it's not news. It's a few paranoid people talking about how dangerous RADICAL ISLAM is."

I find this article filled with just as much propaganda as an article about radical Islam, yet Google news still displays it (it's interesting how left-leaning opinion pieces are fine):

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/08/05/opinion/doc4c5...

With everything that has happened in the world, I don't see how you can pass off "the dangers of radical islam" as something small in the minds of paranoid people.

"This is not a "liberal bias". This is an attempt to have a news feed that contains news. Not libel. Not hate speech."

What you call "hate speech" and "libel" are just opinions. I find that word thrown around with ease by the left to vilify and silence opposing opinions.

If the info in the above articles are all lies, why does it matter if people read them? Won't they eventually find out?

You're seriously comparing a movie review and a well articulated op-ed piece about where our debt comes from to sites like this (the ones listed in the article about Google censoring 'conservative e-zines')?

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/ "Jesse Norton aka Younes Abdullah, How Did Your Conference Go At RM? You Know, The One With Convicted Terrorist Omar The Goat Humping Bakri Muhammed?"

http://www.michnews.com/Alan_Caruba/ac080410.shtml "This is why a mosque within steps of Ground Zero is so inherently wrong. It says that the intended victims of Islamic domination are simply too blind to envision their fate, too fearful to confront evil, to ready to get on the next train to Auschwitz."

Seriously?

"well articulated op-ed piece about where our debt comes"

This was an okay article and an opinion on where our debt comes from. I was merely pointing out the blogs and opinion pieces do get into google news.

As for the links you just posted: I may not agree with any of the content, but they are also just opinions (and not much worse than the links I posted)

The reason you don't want them posted is because you don't agree with them politically, which goes against the freedom of speech.

I have no opinion of whether or not they should be excluded. In fact, one of the sites listed as "banned" (I have no way to substantiate this) was actually a decent news source with little to no understandably objectionable content: http://www.newmediajournal.us/

EDIT: I should say that I am interested in this inasmuch as it relates to Google censoring news. Having not found any evidence of censorship and having found evidence of actively selecting only quality content, my opinion is that they were right to exclude the blogs listed and it has nothing to do with whatever political beliefs I might hold.

No, the reason I think they were excluded from Google was because of examples like I posted. "Goat humping" has no place in a news feed. Likewise, comparing Islam to Nazi germany is not only in bad taste, it makes almost no sense. Framing this as an ideological debate when it is one of quality of information is nonsensical.

As to your last point, I think it's extremely important that both sides of this ridiculous debate get to talk to one another. Hopefully, if everyone is willing, we'll be able to work together and build a nation together that is tolerant of informed opinion and intolerant of those whose only goal is to inflame, incite and misinform.

Nobody bothered to refute you because the onus was on you to substantiate your accusations. You provided hearsay, but no evidence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com