Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Google slant of news may spread to YouTube

Earlier this month search-engine giant Google purchased the popular YouTube video portal. Credible charges against Google have been made that there search engines have a liberal bias. There's a fear that the left-wing slant may spread to their new acquisition, YouTube.

From the American Thinker:

Five months ago, the Internet’s top search engine Google was accused of banning conservative websites from its news crawl. Last week, the e-behemoth offered to purchase YouTube, the preeminent provider of videos over the Web that has recently been implicated in censorship of its own. With their pending merger, serious questions arise about the future of the most powerful telecommunications medium on the landscape, and who if anyone is trying to control its content.

As reported by American Thinker on May 22, Internet search king Google eliminated a number of conservative e-zines and blogs from its news crawl earlier this year. In all of the cases cited, the alleged offense was the dissemination of “hate speech.”

After closer examination, the tie between all the banished websites was the publishing of articles about radical Islam and its relation to international terrorism. Yet, sites that actually were more specifically involved in such activities – like Hezb’allah’s propaganda arm in Lebanon, al Manar – were unaffected by Google’s “hate speech” policies, and continue to be a part of its news crawl.

And there is this, from the same AT article, via the Washington Examiner:

Enter Fox News pundit, author and top-rated blogger Michelle Malkin. Last week she received notice from YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing service, that her video had been deemed :offensive." The result? Her account may be terminated and her videos deleted.

Malkin's videos are gone from YouTube. The video YouTube thought was offensive was about radical Islam.

Just wait until Google officially owns YouTube, the delete buttons on the Google keyboards will be worn out quickly.

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