Google News, a service used by internet users to source online news articles and reports, is directing visitors to pro-Google stories without disclosing the obvious conflict of interest. Over the past 48 hours, Google News has prominently displayed and encouraged users to read numerous articles presenting the company in a positive light. Concurrent with this, Google News is also promoting negative stories about its competitors.
During the course of Appliance Retailer’s exclusive investigation, the following pro-Google headlines were advertised to Google News users: “Google Maps gets traffic reports”, “Google acquires Carnegie Mellon’s anti-fraud tool” and “Google updates browser, plans to gain share”. These are just three of over 1,000 pro-Google stories being advertised on the site.
Considering Google appears in the headline of these stories, it could be assumed a reasonable person could identify the connection without a disclaimer. But what of the stories that are not obvious? For example, “Survey says: YouTube’s gone mainstream”, “Can Chrome shake up the browser market” and “Verizon’s Android phone to arrive within a few weeks”.
These stories all present favourable views on Google products or ventures, without the Google name appearing in the headline. Google News offers no disclaimer on its site alerting visitors to this conflict of interest. It cannot be expected that a reasonable person would know that Google has vested interests in YouTube, Chrome or Android.
The worst case of this breach of its responsibility to its readers – and it does have a responsibility to adhere to the most basic ethics, as it refers to itself as a “News” site – is in its negative reporting of rivals. Currently displayed prominently on the Google News directory are hundreds of stories pejoratively reviewing Google’s search engine competitor Bing. Headlines include “Bug testers prefer Google to Bing”, “Bug testers: Google is clean, Bing is buggy” and “Justice Department further probing Bing-Yahoo deal”.
One man who was prepared to speak on the record was Australian Press Council executive secretary Jack Herman. Mr Herman believes Google should be held to same standard as all other publishers in the country, that is, it should disclose all relevant conflicts of interest.
“Part of our principles say that newspapers or publications need to disclose any interest that may impact on the way in which they report matters,” said Herman.
“We’re trying to entice websites who are not directly affiliated with our publishers to subscribe to our standards, but it’s a matter of them making that decision themselves, we can’t force them.”
When presented with this information, Google Australia public relations manager Annie Baxter issued the following statement:
“Google News is a news search service that, similar to the Google search engine, collects news information it can find on the web, creates an index with that information, and serves it to users.
“The headlines displayed are those that independent news organisations have chosen to write, and are selected entirely by a computer formula, based on many factors including how often and on what sites a story appears elsewhere on the web.
“Visitors to Google News can easily see where the headlines are coming from (i.e. New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald, etc), and choose whether to click through based on their interest in reading a story coming from that publication.”