Computer Bias
Outside the Beltway reports on an article that suggests that Google News has a built-in conservative bias.This is a ludicrous hypotheses.
Google includes sources that aren't really "news" sites in their hit lists -- like blogs. The article only covers two topics in the article, "John Kerry" and "George Bush". For Kerry, they say:
In addition to mainstream news outlets from both sides of the political fence (say, NPR and The Washington Post on the left and The Washington Times and New York Post on the right), there were 34 anti-Kerry screeds from the second-tier websites. There was only one pro-Kerry item, from CommonDreams.org.If you go to Google News today, enter "John Kerry" and click "Search", one of the first five hits Daily Kos -- hardly a "news" site. Also in the first 100 hits are leftist sites like AlterNet, DisInfo.com, truthout, Democratic Underground, Common Dreams, Proud Parenting, and another six Daily Kos stories. Looking further we see Socialist Worker, Dissident Voice and USAbroad.org -- all listed as if they were valid sources of news.
Want to guess the very top hit when searching for "losing Iraq"? Would you believe Daily Kos?
How about the opposite term, "winning Iraq"? The first four hits are indeed valid news sources. The fifth is Axis of Logic.
Conservative bias from the organization that allows ads for porn but refuses ads for gun-related services -- or even knives? Yeah, I don't think so!
Blog post #3729 in category
Media Spin
posted 26 September 04