Funferal

Orlowski’s abuse of truth

This is not too topical, but something I’ve meant to blog for a while. Earlier this year Andrew Orlowski of the Register wrote a series of disparaging articles about weblogs and blogging, in which he seemed to conflate the concept of the weblog and a small subset of tech-oriented bloggers. He also strayed into Grassy Knoll territory with hints that Google were conspiring to keep weblogs high on their rankings.
Around the same time, however, he published some interesting stories about the structure of Google’s news service, specifically pointing out that Google included press releases from major corporations among its news sources.

Orlowski was interested in Google’s policy on the matter, and after chasing Google for a while was able to state that “We will learn of these guidelines on Monday, and share them with you the moment we receive this historical [sic] document.” In the meantime he urged readers to contact him with comments and questions.
This triggered something in my memory, and after some searching I found a reference to Google policy, as I laid out in a mail to Orlowski. This showed that Google had claimed to only include sources which had a ‘proper’ editorial process. If Google were now including press releases, this obviously breached their stated policy, and the example would be a useful tool for Orlowski in his next encounter with Google.
So I was somewhat surprised when Orlowski, in his later coverage, stated that “a written Policy statement remains elusive.” How could Orlowski say this when I had sent him a link to the following:

To ensure high quality content on Google News, we require the following criteria from our news sources:

the organization must be made up of more than one individual and

they must guarantee that all articles will be reviewed by their respective editors prior to publication on the web.

The answer, in retrospect is actually quite obvious. Orlowski is not really interested in following the story where it may lead. He wants to defend ‘high’ news, and a story which drew attention to questionable treatment of Indymedia or other ‘amateur’ outlets would not serve his purpose.
Outlining the hypocrisy of a journalist who wants to defend ‘professional’ journalistic values, yet claims not to have evidence which would change his case from his preferred direction …. is left as an exercise for the reader.
My mail [edited slightly for the web]:

Andrew,

Glad to follow your recent articles. Recently I came across this story which details how Google removed Infoshop and most indymedia centres from their lists. Their excuse was that news on these sites are not subject to editorial approval before posting.

Also, this page lists, in part, a mail from Google, listing their criteria. It might be interesting to compare this mail to whatever you receive yourself….