

The Autocrat's Algorithm: Is Google News helping to spread propaganda? - andreshb
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/19/the_autocrat_s_algorithm

======
ajays
One man's "propaganda" is another man's "truth".

The author writes, "While few American readers object to getting their news
from the BBC, partially funded by the British Foreign Office, many find the
Qatari-funded satellite network Al Jazeera hopelessly biased." This is funny,
and I'm surprised the author did not mention it, because Al Jazeera is
actually mostly former members of BBC's Middle-East service. Just because it's
the Qatari government bankrolling them doesn't make them any more biased than
when the British government was bankrolling them. If the claim is they're
biased now, then it is safe to conclude that they were biased earlier.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The fact that the people are the same doesn't mean the reporting is the same.
Al Jazeera seems to have very different reporting standards than the BBC. It's
hardly outside the realm of possibility that the former-BBC types wanted to
engage in biased reporting at the BBC, but were not permitted to.

~~~
ajays
It is equally likely that they were being forced to be biased in BBC, but
chose not and left? You do realize that many of the Al Jazeera people are
Brits?

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm only responding to the point that since the people are the same, the bias
levels should also be the same.

As for specific bias at Al Jazeera, the main thing that jumped out at me when
I watched it is simple racism. Arab minority being oppressed by non-Arab
majority is a major human rights crisis. Anyone who fights back is a martyr.
When a non-Arab underclass is oppressed by Arabs (or Farsis, they seem to be
brothers in arms), meh. If they fight back, they are criminals.

My biggest WTF moment was reading an article about Kurds asserting their right
to return to Kirkuk and take their land back from settlers. Somehow, the
article managed to compare the Kurds to Israelis (rather than to
Palestinians). I'll try to dig it up.

That's the sort of thing that I think most western editors would frown upon,
except maybe at the Stormfront Newsletter.

~~~
ajays
You do realize that American media is quite biased too? I'm not even talking
about Fox News; even the so-called "mainstream" media is quite biased. Case in
point: whenever it's a cute Caucasian woman who's missing, every news networks
covers it; but when it's a woman of color, then you barely hear a peep. I
mean, we're still talking about Natalie Holloway. There's even a term for it
now: "Missing white woman syndrome".

Meanwhile, waterboarding is called "torture" for 40 years, and then suddenly
it becomes an "enhanced interrogation technique" when we start doing it.

The point is: Al Jazeera appears "biased" to people because they're not biased
in the way we want them to be.

You claim that Al Jazeera is biased against non-Arabs. How do you then explain
the fact that Al Jazeera was just kicked out of Morocco for being biased
towards Western Sahara?

Please keep in mind that Al Jazeera is a network. Just like any other network,
there are people there who are biased in various directions. You can't just
cherry-pick reports and paint the whole network with "bias".

~~~
yummyfajitas
_You do realize that American media is quite biased too?_

See here <http://searchyc.com/yummyfajitas+media> for assorted posts by me
which include swipes at the media for bias (usually while making unrelated
points).

Look, I'm only trying to point out that "same reporters" != "same bias
level/direction". I'll leave it to others to debate the relative merits of Al
Jazeera vs MSNBC. It's irrelevant to me, I don't watch any of them.

~~~
ajays
Somehow, "I don't watch any of them"

seems to contradict your earlier statement:

"As for specific bias at Al Jazeera, the main thing that jumped out at me when
I watched it is simple racism."

I have watched Al Jazeera very occasionally. As well as Link TV. While I may
find some specific parts odious, there are other programs there that are
shaking up the system in the Middle East. Al Jazeera is hated as much in
Washington as it is in Riyadh. This, to me, is a good thing: if they're
pissing people on both sides off, then they must be doing something right.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I could similarly make a statement: "I _don't vote_." That would not
contradict a statement that " _when_ I vot _ed_ , I voted for fringe
candidates."

The key is grammatical tense: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense>

I was a news junkie from about 9/11/01 until roughly 2005. I don't bother
anymore. Too much work to get truth, too little reward. (The same applies to
voting.)

------
barrkel
US news sources are almost relentless in their biased US-centric agenda. Being
favourably biased towards your country "right or wrong" is a natural side-
effect of nationalism and patriotism framing the state as a larger family. A
veritable conspiracy theory of propaganda isn't necessary to explain the
groupthink and intellectual capture of (media) elites all over the world.

------
anigbrowl
It's been overrun by SEO and seems to be getting worse every day. I was
horrified when using someone else's computer recently to find that the
selection quality of Google news was substantially better when I was _not_
logged in.

------
vtail
Putting emotions aside, decent news ranking algorithm should: \- put high
weight on the original content \- put higher weight on the local reporting \-
put higher weight on popular news sources (e.g. high quotation index, high
page rank etc.) \- put lower weight on second- and third-hand reporting

Under such conditions, it's extremely hard (if not impossible) to ignore
propaganda, which _by design_ generates lots of original and local content,
unless you execercise some political judgement, such as punishing news sources
for being funded by hostile governments - which is what Google News is trying
to avoid, according to them.

It seems to me that Google News is just reflecting (sad) reality where more
money/resources can generate more coverage. Any ideas how technology could
change that?

~~~
dkarl
_punishing news sources for being funded by hostile governments_

It doesn't matter whether the government is "hostile" or not. Every country,
the U.S. included, is friendly with some pretty repressive regimes. Or, to
look at it from an international perspective, are you saying Iranians should
trust Syrian state media more than the BBC because Syria is friendlier to Iran
than Great Britain is?

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petercooper
This article makes a bizarrely implicit suggestion that US media is not biased
and is not encouraged to take certain standpoints.

I enjoy both British and US media and while I can't issue a judgment on who is
more objective, the difference in the biases and portrayal of international
events even between these two aligned nations is startling. I cannot be as
quick as this author to slam Russian or Chinese sources as obviously biased.

------
julius_geezer
""We can't allow ourselves to be out-communicated by our enemies."

I don't regard RT as a friend, but "enemies"?

It is also worth mentioning that the notionally respectable media has a very
mixed record over the years. Look up Walter Duranty for one example, Robert
McCormick for another.

