I got a note from Gil Shterzer telling me that Google News was carrying hate-stories from the IndyMedia site "again." This sort of surprised me because, having seen stuff from the Stalinist Worker's World Party, as well as stuff like IndyMedia on there before, I thought they'd always done that.

That turns out not to be the case. The generally level-headed Meryl Yourish is blogging on this issue, as is the somewhat more controversial but usually reliable LGF.

Something like this does bring up questions about what should be counted as a news organization and what shouldn't. There's always the worry over censorship in these cases. But surely a comprehensive news-crawler should have some discriminatory powers between services, right? I don't need stuff from Neo-Nazi newsletters, Free Republic, Democratic Underground, or execrable sites like Bartcop or IndyMedia or the Worker's World Party newsletter, showing up as "news." Do you?

I suggest that a polite note to the Google News people is in order, as Meryl suggests.