Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un2google021908.html
UNITED NATIONS, February 19 -- One week after excluding Inner City Press from its Google News service, and after protests and media coverage, Google quietly resumed including the publication's articles in the database, without apology or explanation. The company's responses to journalists' inquiries, that the removal was based on receipt of a single complaint, from a complainant Google would not identify, raise more questions than they answer.
If Inner City Press filed a complaint against, say, the New York Times, would that publication be removed?
If the deletion of Inner City Press from the database on February 12 was, as Google now claims, a mistake, why did it take the technology company a full week to reverse the process?
Was Inner City Press only restored because other journalists and citizens came to its defense, while the spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was on Tuesday asked about UN involvement in "censorship" (video here) and television appearances were scheduled?
Despite the denial by the UN Development Program that it filed the complaint, was a complaint as indicated by sources filed by its affiliate the U.S. Committee for UNDP, whose board of directors includes a representative of UN contractor Lockheed Martin, the subject of recent investigative coverage?
The questions, and issues to be covered, only continue to multiply. Watch this site.
