Editorials

When searching a mainstream news Web site don’t be surprised if you find Muslims described as “ragheads” and “Islamofascists.” Just don’t expect Israelis to be subjected to the same sort of ethnic slurs—articles that contain derogatory terms about Israelis are forbidden. 

SF.indymedia.org, a San Francisco-based independent news Web site, recently found about this policy the hard way. Google News, the news compilation site of the popular search engine, has banned all references to sf.indymedia.org material on its Web site because of a flap over the description of Israeli soldiers as “zionazis.” 

The term appeared in a posting to sf.indymedia.org last May in regard to an attack by Israeli soldiers on a Palestinian home in the West Bank that left a young child dead. The post was essentially a letter to the editor, but according to Ryan Bagded of Berkeley, an editorial staffer with sf.indymedia.org and a freelance journalist, Google News should not have referred its users to the posting in the first place.  

Due to Google News’ concerns about the freewheeling style at sf.indymedia.org (the site is dedicated to free speech and does not edit the content provided by contributors) Bagded says sf.indymedia.org agreed to set up a special link for stories that had been approved for Google News. It was a system that was supposed to catch phrases like “zionazi”—a term Bagded admits would not be suitable for a news Web site. 

“There’s still no explanation about how that happened,” says Bagded. “It could very well be a technical error on our end. I don’t think so, because we set up a special page for them. But then maybe the technical error’s on their end. Maybe their spider technology goes too far.” 

Google News uses “spider” technology to search for stories to include on its site—automated programs that grab the contents of various news organizations such as the New York Times’ Web site and then create an index for the stories. 

Sf.indymedia.org runs reports produced by volunteer producers on the anti-war movement, labor issues, forest preservation efforts and other stories often ignored or underreported by the mainstream press. The San Francisco Web site is one of many located around the world. 

A spokesman for Google said the company had no comment “at this time.”  

Google first took sf.indymedia.org off its index last March after determining that the site did not have proper editorial review of its articles. The special page was then developed, but in May the term “zionazi” was discovered and Google took sf.indymedia.org off its index for good. 

At the time, Marissa Mayer, who runs Google News, referred to “zionazi” as a “degrading, hateful slur.” In hopes that they could work something out, sf.indymedia.org refrained from reporting their removal from Google News until earlier this month when the group posted a notice about the action written by Bagded, available at www.sf.indymedia.org/news/. 

“We wanted to work it out with them and so we held off on saying anything publicly about it for a long time,” says Bagded. He says in May the site received anonymous e-mails from people claiming they would “make sure” that sf.indymedia.org would be removed from Google News. 

Further muddying the waters is that racial slurs directed at Arabs and Muslims seem to be allowed by Google News. 

Bagded recently searched the site for news about the Iraq war and came across references to “Islamofascists” and other terms. In a search of “green beretiraq” Bagded found an article written by a U.S. soldier that referred to Muslims as “ragheads” and included the following quote: “Instead of being sitting ducks for the ragheads we now are going after the worthless pieces of fecal matter.” 

“Their policy is inconsistent,” says Bagded. “They are extremely hardline about taking words like “zionazi” out, but you can go to the site right now and search for “Islamofascist” and find that.” He writes on sf.indymedia.org that he believes “Google News needs to take responsibility for their seemingly one-sided tolerance of what is and is not ‘hate speech.’”  

Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Freedom Foundation, a San Francisco-based non-profit dedicated to, among other things, protecting free speech and music downloading on the Web, isn’t sure Google’s action against sf.indymedia.org is censorship. 

“They clearly have a right to do it, but is it wise?” says Tien. 

Ultimately for Bagded, Google News’ removal of sf.indymedia.org is about accountability. “Google News is the most famous news aggregation service. It’s a widespread thing,” says Bagded. “Where I work lots of people use it. To me it’s important that right now people hold sites like this accountable because it’s the new form of media. I use Google News more than I read the newspaper or watch TV news and I know that almost all my friends are the same way.”