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Google's Selective Editing

Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by carpro, May 20, 2006.

  1. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Murtha&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d

    A google news search for "Murtha" yielded the following:

    http://www.marinetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1812901.php

    MarineTimes.com, VA - 1 hour ago
    ... John Murtha, D-Pa., was correct in saying Marines killed innocent women and children “in cold blood” during the attacks last November. ...


    What the article actually said:

    Officials in the Pentagon and at U.S. Central Command declined to say whether Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was correct in saying Marines killed innocent women and children “in cold blood” during the attacks last November.


    Google left out a very key phrase. Intentional or not?

    Looks like malicious and purposeful editing to me.
     
  2. Bro. Curtis

    Bro. Curtis <img src =/curtis.gif>
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    Google doesn't think people in China deserve to know their own history. What does that tell ya ?
     
  3. billwald

    billwald New Member

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    Your complaint is with www.marinetimes.com not with google. I find google to be very useful.
     
  4. standingfirminChrist

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    Is it possible that Google has not updated link yet? That they have not been given the updated message?
     
  5. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Sure it is. :rolleyes:

    I,m sure they told google to change the entire meaning of the sentence by leaving out key words.
     
  6. Terry_Herrington

    Terry_Herrington New Member

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    I went to the site and found the quote intact. I don't know what Carpro is talking about?
     
  7. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Go to google "news" and enter "Murtha correct".

    It's the first entry right now and the quote is definitely NOT intact. Google left out the key words.

    I'm sorry you are having problems. This is not difficult.
     
  8. KenH

    KenH Well-Known Member

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    Not intentional. It is the result of using the words "Murtha correct" in the search. It is grabbing those two words out of the story. If you notice they are both in bold in the search results.

    When I typed in only "Murtha" the Albuquerque Tribune story didn't show up in the first ten pages of results that I checked before stopping. If this was intentional on Google News' part I would expect that simply typing in "Murtha" would have brought up the same result at the top of the list or at least early on.
     
  9. Joseph_Botwinick

    Joseph_Botwinick <img src=/532.jpg>Banned

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    Ken is correct. I don't think there is a conspiracy here.

    Joseph Botwinick
     
  10. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    Google , as you know, is constantly evolving.

    When I first discovered this, all I entered was "Murtha" and nothing else. Then I was looking at source after source with the same butchered quote.

    Maybe it's just a coincidence. ;)
     
  11. emeraldctyangel

    emeraldctyangel New Member

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    If they are sourcing the Marine Times, it was prob no mistake. They, and the Army, AF, and Navy Times all get stuff really wrong.

    You should see AOL's taglines....LOL! They post some link with a very dramatic line, you click on it and their own story defies what the link implied. Everytime I used to click on their links, I would think "Fell for it AGAIN! Shoot!"
     
  12. carpro

    carpro Well-Known Member
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    The Marine Times got it right.

    Read it for yourself.
     
  13. Daisy

    Daisy New Member

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    You seem to think that there are actual people typing in the references, but that is not how it works. The algorithms look for stories which contain both words (or when more than one word is enclosed in quotes, the exact quoted phrase), but the words can be in either order and not in the same sentence or even the same paragraph.

    Computers also do the editing. You have to pay attention to the elipses '....' and realize that where they occur, vast amounts of words, sentences and paragraphs have been left out for brevity's sake.

    The order of the articles is also determined by algorithms which include date, number of times the words appear and how many people have accessed them among other things. Some clever people have figured out how to manipulate the results - google bombing - if you google on "failure", you'll see that the Bush-bashers have a slight edge over the Carter-haters. If enough Bush supporters click on Carter's entry, they will tip the balance and the order will be reversed.
     
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