One man's "propaganda" is another man's "truth".<p>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.
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.
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 <i>not</i> logged in.
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<p>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.<p>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?
This article makes a bizarrely implicit suggestion that US media is not biased and is not encouraged to take certain standpoints.<p>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.
""We can't allow ourselves to be out-communicated by our enemies."<p>I don't regard RT as a friend, but "enemies"?<p>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.