http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=7&no=381087&rel_no=1

New Media, Censorship, and Google News: Report from panel at Columbia 
University Graduate School of Journalism

Jay Hauben 	Published 2007-11-27 06:44 (KST)   

Can the "new media" help an uncensored journalism to emerge? Is there a 
connection between new media and new journalism? One clue to an answer to 
these questions is that new media especially the Internet make possible 
new sources and forms of journalism such as citizen journalism and blogger 
journalism. But why is a new journalism needed and what would be its 
mission?

Recently, a panel (see below) was gathered at the Columbia Graduate School 
of Journalism CJS[1] in New York City to address "The Changing Media 
Landscape." This was the third annual panel under this title. The hall was 
full and the session with six panelists and questions from the audience 
lasted for two-and-a-half hours. The whole event was Web cast live[2] and 
had a live chat session by which offsite watchers could ask questions.

	"The Changing Media Landscape, 2007"
	
COLUMBIA JOURNALISM DIALOGUES

Tuesday, Nov. 13 / Columbia Journalism School / 6:30-9 p.m.

SPEAKERS at the program included:

Josh Cohen, business product manager, Google News.

Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan, an Iranian-born blogger, journalist and 
Internet activist.

Jonathan Dube, director of digital programming, CBC, Canadian public radio 
and TV.

Andrew Lih, author of a new book on Wikipedia and expert on Chinese media.

Mindy McAdams, new media education pioneer and professor at University of 
Florida.

Michael Rogers, resident futurist of The New York Times.

MODERATOR:

Sree Sreenivasan, dean of students, Columbia Journalism School and WNBC-TV 
tech reporter.

The event has been archived at: groundreport.tv. 	

The panelists were Josh Cohen, the business project manager of Google 
News, a major news aggregator and model of a new way to present news; 
Hossein Derakhshan[3], known as the "blogfather" of the over 800,000 
strong blogging community who blog in Farsi, the language of Iran; John 
Dube, director of digital programming for CBC news, Canada's national 
public radio and TV broadcaster; Mindy McAdams a professor of new media 
journalism at the University of Florida; Andrew Lih, journalism professor 
and author who has taught in New York, Hong Kong and now Beijing; and 
Michael Rogers, resident futurist of The New York Times, part of a 
department with the mission to advise the paper's management on what 
changes are likely to come in the next five years that will effect 
journalism. The panel was moderated by Sree Sreenivasan, CJS dean of 
students.

The discussion began with Cohen putting forward Google Inc. as a 
corporation striving to organize the world's information to make it 
universally accessible and useful. Google News is similar to the familiar 
Google Web search engine except that Google News clusters links to many 
news sites around current news stories. Derakhshan told of his blog being 
filtered (blocked) in Iran, and also that his former hosting company in 
the U.S. had shut down his site. He is also facing a $2 million law suit 
filed by an expatriate Iranian who is siding with the U.S. government's 
hostility to Iran. Derakhshan was critical of the subtle propaganda he 
sees in the coverage by all Western media new and old of the nuclear 
development program in Iran. He also questioned whether the trend called 
Web 2.0 was becoming a "tyranny of the popular." If what gets on the front 
page of sites like digg.com is whatever is most popular at the moment, 
might not unpopular but perhaps more important views become as isolated in 
the new media environment as in the old?

Dube answered this last question. He defended Web 2.0, observing that 
"most popular lists" are a filtering but may be helpful because they use 
the "collective wisdom of the crowd" to get personally useful information 
to a reader. McAdams added the question of the importance to journalists 
of being paid. She saw that people in Burma took risks to get videos and 
blog posts of the repression of protesting monks out to the rest of the 
world as their contribution to the struggle and not as a source of income. 
Andrew Lih added that citizen journalism is playing a particularly active 
role in Asia and gave Burma and Pakistan as current examples.

The panelists continued as above to speak to a variety of topics 
especially Web pages, blogs and the increasing use of video. For me, 
however, the heart of the discussion addressed Google News and censorship.

One of new media's spectacular successes is Web and database information 
sources and the search engines that make the information accessible. For 
example, the Google Web search system brings to a user very rapidly a fair 
number of hits for almost any search term or phrase usually with a helpful 
ranking of relevance. In principle the search could include data from 
every Web site. A questioner from the audience asked Cohen why the news 
site OhmyNews International no longer appears in Google News search 
results after having appeared in such search results for more than a year. 
Cohen answered that Google News operated on a different principle from 
that of Google Web. Not all news sites are being indexed by Google News. 
"Google News works on a closed index," Cohen explained. Every site 
submitted is reviewed to determine if it meets the inclusion guidelines. 
Also, if the Google News team receives a complaint, it reviews a site 
again with possible removal as the result.

Cohen was asked if the inclusion guidelines can be seen. They are not 
online so there are many complaints online that the process is not 
consistent and that the Google News team never answers specifically why it 
puts a site in or why it takes a site out of the index. Cohen answered 
that the Google News team does apply its inclusion guidelines consistently 
but he agreed transparency is lacking. He acknowledged that the team does 
review sites when it gets complaints. If the site meets the criteria but 
the team feels it should still not be in the index, the team can ask the 
programmers to fine tune the algorithms to correct the situation. Cohen's 
answers implied that Google's claim that there is no bias in its searches 
leaves out the human judgment of what sites get indexed in Google News. 
That judgment could be as subjective as any editorial decision that 
selects which articles get on the front page of a Web site or newspaper. 
The exclusion of sites raised the question of censorship by Google not 
only in China but also in the U.S.

Derakhshan commented that the concept of censorship is not well 
constructed theoretically. He offered his definition that "censorship is 
controlling the reality by constructing various versions of it." That 
definition includes the blunt censorship by governments such as in Iran, 
the United Arab Emirates and just now in Pakistan. He added that the value 
of his definition is that it includes other more subtle mechanisms of 
censorship like embedded journalism and corporate journalism. Derakhshan 
told of a journalist who wrote a story about the kidnapping of Westerners 
in Iran, which her editor published. But when she wrote a similar story of 
the U.S. arrest of Iranians in Iraq the editor would not publish it. 
Journalists learn from such treatment what stories to cover and which ones 
not to waste time on. Editors know their advertisers or sponsors and are 
sensitive about what to cover as a sort of corporate self-censorship.

In the coverage in the Western press of Iranian nuclear technology 
development, Derakhshan drew a parallel with the Western press reporting 
of the proposed nationalization of Iran's oil by the government of 
Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953. Then The New York Times characterized Mossadeq 
as a "dictator" and warned, "Iran Is Playing With Fire," just before he 
was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup. Today there is a similar 
demonization of Iran and its president. Derakhshan observed that in 
current articles in The Boston Globe, on the BBC and in the whole Western 
press without exception there are two final paragraphs. One paragraph 
reports that the U.S. suspects that Iran has "ambitions" to develop 
nuclear weapons. The always appearing next to last and last paragraph 
reports that Iran denies it has plans other than for peaceful uses of 
nuclear energy. The censorship here is that there is a third party, the 
International Atomic Energy Agency, not mentioned. This third party has 
judged that there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. 
Derakhshan's conclusion is that a censorship question can be raised about 
every nation and it would be more fruitful if censorship were discussed 
only in this context.

A question asked of Lih was about China. With 163,000,000 Chinese people 
online and spectacular journalism like online support for the owners of 
the "Awesome Nail House" and for the "Four Hundred Fathers" seeking to 
free their kidnapped children from slave-like labor conditions, how come 
the press outside of China can only look for Internet censorship in China? 
Lih answered that the question was important. He sees that the Internet 
users in China "are usually too busy enjoying the Internet they have to 
lament the Internet they do not have." He reported that the Internet has 
changed things so completely in China and become so much a part of 
business and personal networks that it is something that cannot be turned 
back. It is already impossible to black out completely any information or 
activity. In the long run he predicted it can only get more open. Lih's 
answer seemed to agree with the tone of the question that the Internet in 
China is being misreported in the Western press.

The panel's discussion highlighted for me that even Google searches can be 
part of a process of filtering or censorship. New media does not 
necessarily mean less censorship. The new journalism that is needed is one 
that exposes the possible false narrative of the mainstream media, 
educational curricular and history books and seeks to get underneath the 
surface to find and report on the full story. New media like citizen 
journalism and blog journalism has the potential to be such needed 
journalism but it can succeed only if it understands the full picture of 
reality and censorship. 

1. www.journalism.columbia.edu
http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/
2. www.groundreport.com
http://www.groundreport.com/article.php?articleID=2838014
3. hoder.com
http://hoder.com/weblog/
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