arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

The ironic thing about checking allegations of censorship by one of the Google family of search engines is that a first natural step is … a Google search.

That's how invaluable this Internet engine has become. Recently Google added a sister site called Google News. As the company puts it this site is "a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention." The computers crawl some 4,500 websites daily to assemble the news of the day, the hour and the minute. The results don't please everyone; Google's list of frequently-asked questions includes the indignant-sounding "How could you leave out Lemur News Digest? How do I get it added?" (Google warns there are no guarantees, but offers an address, news-feedback@google.com, where they'll feed such suggestions and questions.)

Which brings us to IndyMedia, the newswire that lets almost anyone post articles -– many of which are unique and excellent bits of reporting, and some of which emphatically aren't. Those apolitical computers at Google News have had an on-again, off-again love affair with the IndyMedia reports, and IndyMedia itself rages with speculation it has been cut off from the News Google site, or is about to be cut off, or was cut off but is now back on. By some accounts, Google News is avoiding Indy Media as an expression of pro-war "patriotism," by other accounts it's been pressured to do something about IndyMedia postings considered anti-Semitic. Whatever the case, IndyMedia –- all of it -- is off of Google News. You can tell by conducting a Google News search for IndyMedia and sorting it by date; nothing comes up after May 16.

So a uniquely editor-free, computer-generated news service feels the need for human intervention after all. Why? To block out a uniquely editor-free, citizen-generated news service. Will Google News now steer clear of every Middle Eastern publication to have ever given voice to an anti-Semitic remark?