Google News (still in beta–that ought to be a website. I see that somebody owns http://www.stillinbeta.com), as you no doubt know, aggregates 4500 online news sources. It’s a god-send to the PR and marketing industry–it’s a crucial means of tracking of who’s mentioned where. Here are two peculiar stories about the site:
The 4500 news sources are picked manually, and apparently include National Vanguard (hey, first use of nofollow!), a white supremicist site. While I think these people have the right to publish whatever they want, I’m not sure they belong in Google’s news site. When you get down to it, though, the issue’s pretty complex.
What is Google’s criteria for inclusion? What should it be? I note, for example, this story about white student protesters being attacked throughout France. I can’t find another English-language news source in Google that corroborates it. Does this mean the story is all lies, was it under-reported in the English-language media or am I just lousy at searching? In either of the first two cases, are we better off with or without this biased news source? I see that Google News includes a pretty dubious-looking source (though less extreme, admittedly) from the left-wing camp.
Clearly, as the number of news sources increases, a hand-picked set of sources in Google News becomes less effective.
It’s these fraught philosophical questions that Google should shun. They should solve the problem technologically, by offering a Feedster-like news search, including every RSS feed on the planet. Users should be able to rank sources by authority, so that the New York Times will trump dodgy websites. Until such time, of course, that dodgy websites become legitimate, trusted news sources and their authority grows accordingly.
In another, totally-unrelated story, the French news agency AFP wants out of the Google News directory (via Andy Lark). Why you’d want to encourage fewer people to read your news, I’ll never know.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
“Users should be able to rank sources by authority, so that the New York Times will trump dodgy websites. Until such time, of course, that dodgy websites become legitimate, trusted news sources and their authority grows accordingly.”
While I agree that this would certainly help reduce the “dodgy” news outlets I have to wonder what ranking CNN would get. Besides, as you well know, even trusted news sources are nabbing “news” from blogs and printing them as fact in their stories.
I think many people are aware that mega news corporations aren’t as trustworthy as they’d like us to believe so allowing readers to decide what news source was best could certainly create some interesting, if not comical, results.