BNP 'stories' continue to tarnish Google News

Google is apparently still including the far-right British National Party (BNP) among its selection of news sources; MediaGuardian last week reported that the BNP's story on murdered schoolgirl Mary-Ann Leneghan was listed top of the site's search results.

I was looking for news on John Peel's death back in October 2004 when I found a BNP press release listed on Google News. At the time the retort from Google's press office was a rather wobbly "press releases can be valuable resources in pointing to the origin of a news story". Really?

It is absolute nonsense to include press releases on a news service, let alone press releases with an evident political agenda from the British Nasty Party. Google also excludes news sources produced by one person which obviously includes blogs. Why? Because they might be unreliable or biased?

Skewed news, a tarnished brand; Google is not doing any favours to anyone apart from the BNP. John Peel would probably have not been too chuffed either.

More news from journalism.co.uk:
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Comments? Email me

Comments

From Martin Wingfield, 13:06 25 January 2006

Don't you think that the NUJ skews the news and tarnishes journalism when it publishes guidelines on how its members should doctor news stories concerning the BNP.

In April last year, just prior to the General Election, I did a search on the British National Party in Google News and came up with 325 stories. 323 of them were hostile to the BNP.

By now including BNP press releases in its news searches, Google has helped redress that balance.

Martin Wingfield
Editor
Freedom

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