Google Censorship

[IndieSinger]

On the BBC News website, I was reading a Have Your Say debate on Google shares - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/3671667.s
tm - and Sheri Kirkland of Los Angels, USA, said this, 'Having recently returned from 3 weeks in Europe I discovered what others already know - Google sensors [sic] negative stories about the war in Iraq from readers in America. At a time when Americans are struggling to understand the truth, this is a deplorable act.' Does anyone know if there's any truth in this? If it is true, I'm inclined to agree with Ms. Kirkland. What are your thoughts?

[gontofe]

well, having just done a search on www.google.com for 'iraq war', I didn't find only positive sites, costofwar.com can't really be positive, can it? www.truthuncovered.com, described as 'a sneak peek at the documentary that tells the story of how the truth became the first American casualty of the Iraq war' is another good example.

[LeMarchand]

Try typing "weapons of mass destruction" and hitting "I'm feeling lucky" - pretty good proof that they aren't censoring negative stuff (and very funny); unless they give different results if your IP address identifies you as US-based... I believe that Google have started to fiddle with the search results for P2P queries, though.

[sylvday]

Ms Kirkland was possibly not referring to Google's mainstream search pages, but to its special News "channel". However, even then, it seems unfair comment -at this moment, Google's top news item is about the US army's abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and since it lists over one thousand worldwide newspaper articles on the issue it is hardly biased coverage.

[apricot]

During the first Gulf War I was in China watching the news on CNN. To my surprise when I returned to the UK, The Brits WERE in the war. I watched BBC news to see if it was equally parochial but no, the BBC gave equal coverage of the USA in the Gulf.