For the past 5 years.. we’ve been relentless about getting information out to our community about Net Neutrality. We’ve written lots of articles and posted up lots of videos on the subject. We know it’s not a sexy subject and for many its hard to understand, yet it’s the most important thing effecting Free Speech. In a nutshell, large corporate interests are on a mission to suppress the flow of information from the masses.
The topic of Net Neutrality being confusing, boring and off-putting has been deliberate. There’s lots of money.. we’re talking billions of dollars if Net Neutrality is deaded. This is why the big telecoms like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have spent almost a billion dollars lobbying to get rid of it.
There’s also huge opportunity to make a small handful of anointed people and organizations gilded information gatekeepers or the beneficiaries of huge sponsorship for conventions and other projects provided they saddle up with the telecoms and use their political and social capital to make this a non issue, keep folks in the community confused or in some cases aggressively advocate.
For years one of the strongest supporters of Net Neutrality was Google.. They had promised to never be an ‘evil company’. A couple of months ago they stunned everyone when they sat down with Verizon, one of the strongest proponents of ending net neutrality.. The pair came up with a proposal to bring before the FCC in a last-minute attempt to scuttle a vote by congress on the issue.
In the proposal Google said it was important to keep Net Neutrality in place on PCs, but it was every man or this case every company for itself in the wireless world.. They proposed getting rid of this protection. Their proposal drew widespread criticism and set off a firestorm of protests including one that drew several hundred in front of their Mountainview Headquarters. Google insisted that their proposal would work great. Some wanted to believe.
Here we are the day before a historic vote by the FCC to decide whether or not to keep Net Neutrality and now the longer game plans of the telecoms are coming to light. They are already drawing up pricing schemes to start charging cell phone users usage by the page view and by the use of certain features like using Youtube, Twitter or Facebook. We’ve already seen companies saying they are dropping unlimited data packages. This is why.
The argument these telecoms have put forth has been too much bandwidth is being used.. Thats BS.. What’s their seeing is all these new , faster, more efficient applications being used and the potential for a handful of companies to score big..
we encourage everyone to check out this article laying out some of the details..from Wired Magazine
Sadly deading Net Neutrality goes beyond money. It’s also about maintaining power and influence which has led companies like Google to quietly do things like create a tier system for news and information. Long time Tech columnist Zennie Abraham of Zennie62.com pointed this out a few weeks ago when he pointed out that ‘legacy’ (corporate) news outlets were pressuring telecoms and companies like Google to separate their product from blogs who were beating them to the punch in covering and uncovering many stories.
Zennie pointed out that almost overnight thousands of blogs not only lost their traffic, but revenue as Google moved to place corporate backed news operations on the front page of their search engines and blogs and other entities in a another section not readily available or known to the general public. What’s crazy is that you cant even pull up the several columns that Zennie actually wrote on his own blog. It only shows up on outlets that picked up the story such as Seattle PI which links to this story.
Overnight you found topics that were almost exclusively driven by bloggers disappear only to see corporate back outlets take their place. So take a topic like ‘Oscar Grant‘. You look up his name in Google News and all you see are the mainstream media who was the subject of harsh criticism and even protests by community members for with holding crucial information, demonizing Oscar, being embedded with the police during protests and in recent days being a cheerleader for Johannes Mehserle, the former cop convicted of killing Grant. Almost overnight we no longer saw in Google search engines outlets like Indy Bay which was by far the most popular go to place for Grant information.
The Final Call which covered this extensively disappeared. My two sites disappeared as well as Youth Radio, Oakland Local, Oakland Seen, Block Report, Black Hour and about half-dozen other sites that were doing round the clock coverage. What get eliminated from the discussion is the investigative work by these independent journalist that discovered Mehserle’s violent past which was pretty much ignored by Mainstream Outlets. What was missing were the stories of innocent people arrested and roughed up by police who were out during the protests and were umbrelled as rowdy destructive people..
The blogs and independent stories told the harrowing stories experienced by people like Civil Rights attorney Walter Riley and community elder who was arrested in front of his office or Joseph Anderson a journalist who was recently arrested without warning while actually on the air reporting. Those and many other stories disappeared.
Suppression and omission of information is what’s going on as we move in a direction of deading Net Neutrality. If the FCC votes to give control to these corporate giants we can expect to see this increase even more. Today its the bloggers doing politics, but soon if not already it will be independent artists, whistleblowers and any number of folks who feel they need to get information out but find themselves handcuffed. This is happening now.. We hope folks pay attention to tomorrows vote there’s a lot at stake.
Be the first to know. The SavetheInternet.com Coalition has set up a streaming website where you can witness the vote as it happens, beginning at 10:30 a.m. ET, Tuesday, Dec. 21:
Watch the vote on Net Neutrality:www.SavetheInternet.com/FCCmtg
Join us online to watch the vote and connect with others. We’ll be hosting an online conversation with hundreds of other Net Neutrality supporters who are working together to protect the open Internet.
Let the FCC know that we’re watching: www.SavetheInternet.com/FCCmeeting
If you plan to be in Washington on Tuesday, you can come to witness the vote in person. It’s open to the public. I will be outside the meeting with other Free Press staffers to meet with Net Neutrality supporters and pass out information. Come see us and get an “I Support Net Neutrality” sticker to wear into the meeting:
What: FCC Meeting on the open Internet
Where: Room TW-C305
445 12th Street, S.W
Washington, D.C.
When: Tuesday, Dec. 21, 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time(If you plan to attend in person, please come early. We expect a full room.)
More than 2 million people have urged the agency to create real and lasting Net Neutrality protections. We can’t let FCC commissioners turn their backs on us and vote with Comcast and AT&T.
written by Davey D
The in power people consider this the wild wild west era of the internet.
sorry davey, but it appears that what you (and Zennie) reported is incorrect. i just went to google news and typed in “oscar grant.” the second result is a report from Bay Area Indymedia aka indy bay, on the domenici reinstatement…this is followed by ali winston’s KALW story about FBI and DHA monitoring of protests (which you also posted on your site), followed by a New American Media report on a police shooting in Vallejo, followed by an SFGate pickup of an Oakland Local story by Thandisizwe Chimurenga on Mehserle’s sentencing, which ranked above stories on the same topic by the SF Appeal, AOL news, and KTVU. Further down on the page are reports from the SFBayView and Afrik-news.
So it appears content is not being prioritized in the way you and zennie have suggested. At least not yet.
fyi, you may want to read this story by Amy Gahran on tags and attribution, which may spread some light on how search engines optimize results: http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/comments/20101209_playing_tag_with_news_stories_can_attribution_be_built-in_online/
so,
for the past few days it most certainly was Eric.. I tested it twice before printing.. the first stories that appeared were from examiner, followed by San Jose Mercury, examiner Blog.. There was absolutely no Bay Indy media stories.. One of the reasons this stood out was because I needed the Indy Bay story to cite..Naive Meyers.. Domenici story definitely wasn’t up on there
Zennie has been reporting on this for a minute.. His story did not show up in the Google News search engines.. only the PI story..Thats why I linked to that and not his..
Please don’t be so quick to discount as if I like you don’t do the research for a story.. Give me a little credit here..Not gonna put myself out there to discredit.. Zennie definitely wouldn’t and he does due diligence.. He’s an expert at SEO and not to shabby myself in this..myself.. He spoke to Google directly when the blogs were pulled off search the news.. and was told what was going on.. he also had along running battle with Google about how news was prioritized for almost a couple of years…It came to head when he was able to prove he had more traffic then the news paper blogs that contained articles on his own blogs..
I do know when we ran the same day we ran story.. I announced this on the air.. with my computer as I typed in Grant and saw legacy papers pull up.. and one story from SF Bayview
If bringing attention to this helped then great.. But the fact remains they pulled those blogs and I’m getting ready to do shows on this in a minute..
also, i talked to my OaklandLocal peeps aboout this and they confirm they have not disappeared from search engine results overnight, as you claim.
so, you may want to do a little bit more extensive fact-checking before reporting on such an important topic. there’s enough disinformation coming from the telecomm and MSM side as it is.
and, in cased you missed it, here’s my most recent article on NN, from NAM (also ran in Oakland Local): http://newamericamedia.org/2010/12/an-open-internet—final-frontier-for-indie-artists.php
took a screen shot and what has popped up are the legacy paper stories.. Surprised the Bay Indy story popped up since mine ran a full day ahead of theirs and as u can see mine has not popped up at all..
Dave, first of all, all i’m saying is i dont know for sure what’s going on here. You DID report that “My two sites disappeared as well as Youth Radio, Oakland Local, Oakland Seen, Block Report, Black Hour and about half-dozen other sites that were doing round the clock coverage,” right?
So, are you still sticking by that even after refutation from OL’s resident tech/web/analytics expert (who also writes on mobile issues for CNN.com)?
Perhaps it would have been prudent to show the screen shots or otherwise provide indisputable proof before reporting. I do feel your reportage was a bit alarmist, in fact, it alarmed me so much, i fwd’d your story to my web experts who flat-out said that wasn’t the case.
Then i did as you suggested and did a google news search under oscar grant. indybay was #2, there were several other indie media and blog sites on that page, many listed above legacy papers. this pattern continued for the second page, etc. i’m pretty sure, though, that if OaklandLocal had been pulled off the GN roll, i would have heard about it, since I am on their Editorial Team.
In any event, i’m sure you can see why this is problematic on a couple of different levels.
Like i said, i don’t know for sure what’s going on here. Looking at Zennie’s post in the seattle website, it’s dated November 19. Your post reporting on this is dated December 20. That’s a month later. If there were bugs in the metatag system, as Zennie suggested-, perhaps they were fixed by the time you got around to reporting on this.
Yesterday, you wrote: “take a topic like ‘Oscar Grant‘. You look up his name in Google News and all you see are the mainstream media who was the subject of harsh criticism and even protests by community members for with holding crucial information, demonizing Oscar, being embedded with the police during protests and in recent days being a cheerleader for Johannes Mehserle, the former cop convicted of killing Grant. Almost overnight we no longer saw in Google search engines outlets like Indy Bay which was by far the most popular go to place for Grant information.”
As of 12/21, this obviously wasn’t the case, and you provide no specific dates or times as to when this did actually happen, which suggests that if this did happen as you say, it was corrected by the time you posted it. So I’m not discrediting you, my friend, but it appears you may have discredited yourself.
yes I’m absolutely sticking to my story and I’m looking at my screen shot now which shows.. as follows..san jose mercury, SF Chronicle, SF chronicle, SF examiner, Bay Citizen and ABC news.. Indy media was posted today wasnt there obviously when I wrote story.. but it’s in a separate grouping..My site which for the longest was always there is gone.. Now I dont know who your guy is and what you or him are looking at I know what I’m looking at.. and itis sans many of the outlets that covered.. now later down the page there are older listings.. that go to Dec 4th sentencing and some prior and again aside from a handful like afrika news.. its dominated by legacy outlets.. If I can figure out how to post up the photo in comment section I will..
There was no need to post up a screen shot for the story.. that wasn’t the main gest..plus we had already covered this in Zennies blog..Like i said I’ll be following up on this pretty soon but as of now.. I stand by what I said and saw..
Davey, i see the same results as i did yesterday, with one exception–we now have Cecil Brown’s oakland local article, “do oakland police use mind control techniques?” (http://oaklandlocal.com/blogs/2010/12/do-oakland-police-use-mind-control-techniques-opinion). this appeared 5 hours ago as i write this, and is indeed both a blog entry and an oakland local story, so i’m not sure how you can say that the site is delisted when that is obviously not the case.
the legacy sites are indeed clumped to the top result of the domenici reinstatement story, but just mentioning that doesnt show the entire context. in fact, it obscures the whole context.
in general, google news is grouped by topic. the top result does show primarily the legacy sites, but just below that, at #2, is the indymedia story–which if had been delisted as you say, would not appear at all, right?
just below that, at #3, is the Ali Winston KALW story on FBI/DHS monitoring of the OG protests. again, if non-mainstream/political content was being censored as you stated in no uncertain terms, this would not have appeared.
at #4 is the aforementioned OL article on mind control techniques.
at #5 is an SFGate pickup of an OL blog post.
at #6 is a SFBayView story 9followed by hip-hop wired and altanet stories, both independent sites)
at #7 is a New American Media story on “the Mehserle effect”.
at #8 is another KALW story, on federal interest/surveillance of ‘anarchists.’
at #9 is another SFGate pickup of an OL blog.
finally, at #10, is an older KALW story from Dec. 1on the Mehserle bail hearing.
what do these results tell us?
if we only look at the top news story, it is indeed dominated by legacy outlets, which in general, do have more traffic than many indie sites.
however, if we look at the entire page, and the ten topics shown (plus related articles), an entirely different picture emerges, one which completely contradicts your assertion, since IndyBay, OL, SFBV, KALW, and other non-MSM sites actually dominate the listings, at least as of the past two days.
and then there is the time gap between what Zennie wrote and what you wrote, which you didn’t address whatsoever.
i think it’s fairly dangerous, if not intentionally misleading, to claim that indie sites have been delisted when that appears to not have been the case–especially because you are talking about specific sites but offering no direct proof.
does Black Hour–a Laney college site–have more traffic than SFGate? i doubt it. SFGate also has more traffic than Oakland Local, but the Gate picks up much of OL’s content and makes it accessible to a wider audience–which is how things are supposed to work.
then you refer back to zennie’s article as proof of your assertions, while substituting an entirely different context (Oscar Grant news) than what he’s talking about. in fact, if you read his post, he’s not talking about political content at all (actually, he’s fairly conservative in his views–he supported don perata in the oakland mayoral race and recently came out in favor of chevron over the country of ecuador in its lawsuit). one of the more important points of his post was that he also says he retweaked his site to ensure he would remain listed: “my obsessive tinkering with the blog template has resulted in a website that’s so-overengineered, the delisting impact is no where near as great as I feared it would be. The search engine placement is still extremely good, great, even.”
So, even with Google retweaking its metatags, and even if Old Media in some cases was pushed to the front of the listings after the rollout, there are workarounds if you understand the dynamics, but more importantly, that is clearly not the case at this point, more than a month after that happened. we just aren’t seeing censorship to the extent you claim. These independent sites were not “eliminated from the discussion” –if they were, the results i pulled up would surely have been different.
look, i don’t want to get into a pissing match with you on this. but i think it’s clear that what you reported was inaccurate and misleading. whether this was intentional, or just a case of lumping two different contexts together in an attempt to make a point, is a matter of perspective.
but you haven’t offered an explanation of how the results i’ve pulled up on two separate occasions could have differed so greatly from what you reported.
if you have any direct evidence whatsoever that Oakland Local–or any other non-mainstream site reporting on Oscar Grant– “has been eliminated from the discussion,” i’d sure like to see it, especially because, as someone who has written/photographed the OG case from the beginning for many alternative sites (as well as outlets like Vibe.com and The Bay Citizen), i have a personal connection to this issue.
I live in GA & just did a Google search for “Oscar Grant” & this is what I came up with:
1. Video Images
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…/BART_Police_shooting_of_Oscar_Grant_-
3. articles.sfgate.com/…/24817648_1_johannes-mehserle-officer-sentencing- verdict-oscar-grant-oakland-bart (you have to click on top of article, or it will say “page not found”.
4. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/1105/Mehserle-verdict-Johannes-Mehserle-sentencing-stuns-Oscar-Grant-supporters-sparks-riots-in-Oakland (you can put in search engine on web site Oscar Grant to get to article or click on top of page of Google)
5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/oscar-grant-verdict-oakland-riots-johannes- mehserle_n_640468.html
6. http://sfbayview.com/2009/oscar-grant-young-father-and-peacemaker-executed-by-bart-police/ (again search for article)
7. Images for oscar grant
8. http://www.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/07/verdict-to-be-announced-in-oscar-grant-killing-by-bart-officer/1 (had to search for article)
9. colorlines.com/oscar-grant-trial
10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/09/oscar-grant-oakland-police-shooting (this time the link said it contained an illegal url)
I did this on December 24, 2010. I didn’t record the time I started. As a third party I thought I would do this to see if their was a discrepancy depending on the day, time, or geographical location. I live in GA, I have no motive except to see why are their such differences. So if you all don’t mind please let me know, if you have a big difference than I.
I was only willing to go through the first ten as it was on this date 12/24/2010 at 2:02 a.m. E.S.T.
Peace!!
@1sweetshorty
Shorty.. as u know from the twitter feeds there’s been tons of coverage by Grant including many of the stories I done, which were dominating the searches a couple of months ago..
As you can see that’s not the case.. Even the SF Bayview article is an old one from 2009… All mine have all but disappeared and I’ve run articles with those videos that have numbered in the tens of thousands..Just from that search results alone you’d have to wonder if Oakland media was even there..The searches I did pulled up what I mention.. with the exception of my article which was posted on Indybay, but has not shown up at all on my own websites… Thats big change..Now I’m sure if we keep mulling through the pages, we’ll find everyone else..
That should be of grave concern to anyone who covered this to see those search results..
Davey,
You’re so right, that is why I felt obligated to interject as a third party from the southeast, while trying to be neutral (no pun intended). Had it not been for you, I would have never got the story or heard of Oscar Grant. My friends & family had not heard of Oscar Grant. Everyone heard of the “riots” in Oakland because of a man getting shot by the police, and/or the trial was not fair.
Now I know the “true” story, thanks to Davey D via twitter & his blogs. I can only tell the truth to the people I know. So can we only imagine how many millions of people that only know of the mainstream media side story and is relying on that? There was several times Davey had to correct me in the information I was getting from the media. It took me so long to write my blog because I was so afraid to get something wrong, and I still don’t know if I have all of the facts. And it was not for any media, it was a personal blog because of the affect this story had on me, and how I almost didn’t hear about it if it had not been for twitter & Davey D.
So, it really saddens me to see two journalist have such a difference over the most important story in 2010 of injustice in our community. This shows how much the media, the FCC, Net Neutrality, politics, corporations, and race is still such a huge problem here in America.
The truth of the matter is that blogs, twitter, and facebook are the new journalist of today. Does that mean that it is less factual? No. All journalism is done by people & at times there will be mistakes, even when it was just ABC, NBC, and CBS. The difference is before we had no choice but to take the word of mainstream media at face value.
I believe Google is taking stories down and/or moving them as they see fit, or getting paid to do. And we can say that it is a fair assumption that the blogs news reports are not being listed in the search engines fairly
If anyone is really concerned about all the bad policies around the internet, you should assume that ALL of them will be a reality.
and then write articles on how to immune your own online projects as much as possible.
That would be the smart way to go.
reality check time…
first of all, searching ‘google’ on a topic pulls up different results than searching ‘google news’ on a topic. google news has more recent results tagged as news, while google will just bring up a more general results, i.e. the wikipedia entry. shorty, you should try searching GN under OG and see how the results differ.
second of all, i’m used to disinformation coming from the telecomm side, from astroturf orgs like the Alliance for Digital (in)Equality. We expect that from the Evil Empire but not from the so-called Jedi.
third, what we know is that google tweaked its metatags which caused some discomfort throughout the blogosphere as noted by zennie.
fourth, what we don’t know is that indie sites featuring political content have been censored, which is what Davey alleges. It’s worth noting that Zennie is not specifically talking about political content.
fifth, there’s a huge discrepancy in what davey says happened to sites like OL who prominently featured Grant-related material, and what OL’s own tech/web experts are saying. This is problematic, to say the least. you’d think if OL had been delisted they would a)be aware of this and b) be concerned.
sixth, can’t speak for IndyBay but if they are coming up at #2 or #3, it doesn’t seem like they have been affected by any delisting, if it did in fact occur.
seventh, while the possibility of ISPs and search engines censoring traffic based on content remains a possibility–and may even be happening in some cases already,–its a big jump to go from “google tweaked its metatags,” which is what zennie said, to “all indie sources on OG have been blocked” which is essentially what davey claims.
eighth, what seems possible is that some sites may have been affected while others haven’t.
ninth, i think it’s possible to state what the situation is without making up stuff or speculation based on assumption, not fact. it should also be possible to say what indie sites can do to ensure they are optimizing their search results with the metatag system. that may involve further, more carefully considered research. but it sure doesn’t seem like due diligence took place in this case.
tenth, if one gets stone-cold busted for embellishing details, issuing blanket denials doesn’t change the actuality of the situation. this is disappointing, to say the least.
Eric again I’ll say this for the last time…. I stand by my original statements..Your assesment on this is not the end all be all.. It simply means you have a different take..
Google has removed stories out of its search.. I didn’t use the word De-List you did..
The facts are as follows up until a few weeks ago a search to a topic like oscar Grant in Google news.. netted many of the non legacy sites.. That is not the case now.. Yes, a story from a from a site or two pops up..but that doesn’t change the fact that legacy sites dominate the search results and many of the previously listed stories are not to be found even though there have been numreous stories written on oscar Grant topics including the denial of bail on Dec 4th.
Now you seem to wanna go round and round abt what this tech guy says and what you saw here and there..and thats fine.. I have a different take… The fact remains you put in Oscar Grant and lots of stories showed up.. You do it now and there’s a marked decrease.. If Oakland Local doesn’t see this as a concern, Godbless.. I do know that I seen a lot more listings with them around Oscar Grant and I don’t now..and I’m not the only one who has noticed this..
As noted I’ll be doing a show on this after the New Year.. There’s a bit more info to all this that I haven’t written on.. Until then peace..
just to refresh your memory, here is what you wrote:
“Almost overnight we no longer saw in Google search engines outlets like Indy Bay which was by far the most popular go to place for Grant information.
The Final Call which covered this extensively disappeared. My two sites disappeared as well as Youth Radio, Oakland Local, Oakland Seen, Block Report, Black Hour and about half-dozen other sites that were doing round the clock coverage. What get eliminated from the discussion is the investigative work by these independent journalist that discovered Mehserle’s violent past which was pretty much ignored by Mainstream Outlets. What was missing were the stories of innocent people arrested and roughed up by police who were out during the protests and were umbrelled as rowdy destructive people..”
the problem is that you make assertions which are simply untrue, inaccurate, and misleading.
you say Indy Bay is “no longer in Google search engines.” that’s a fairly big claim, if it could be proved, with far-reaching implications. you offer no proof, however.
so guess what happens if i type in “google news oscar grant” into my google search bar? it pulls up 274,000 results. if i click on the first one, it takes me to the google news page. the first two results are the KALW story and… IndyMedia. these are actually listed above legacy sites like the Chronicle, Mercury News, and KGO.
Then we get a BayView story, followed by an AltaNet story, followed by a chronicle blog, followed by…another IndyMedia story, again listed above KTVU, Fox News, the Bay Citizen, and KGO.
so let me ask you this: if IndyMedia has disappeared from Google’s search engine, how could they have the #2 result, as well as several additional results on the front page (not even requiring one to click on related topics within results)?
Mind you all these results are fairly recent, dating from Dec. 4-Dec. 22.
Again, how is this possible if what you say is true?
And, if IndyMedia hasn’t disappeared, and OaklandLocal hasn’t disappeared, and SF BayView hasn’t disappeared–indeed they all come up on the first news page– your assertion that anything has been “eliminated from the discussion” appears to lack credibility.
today, you say: “legacy sites dominate the search results and many of the previously listed stories are not to be found even though there have been numreous stories written on oscar Grant topics including the denial of bail on Dec 4th. ”
Again, this is simply untrue, according to search results i have performed on three separate occasions, all of which have yielded consistent findings.
You claim these are “facts” but you appear to be unable to provide any evidence supporting your claims, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Davey, please explain this.
and fyi, OaklandLocal would be very concerned, were there any truth to what you say.
if you can refute any specific points i am making with actual facts (just typing the word “fact” and believing it is so doesn’t count, btw), i would be more than happy to eat my words.
again, show me where/how/when these sites disappeared as you claim. if you have actual proof and aren’t just selling wolf tickets, that shouldn’t be that hard to do, right? especially since you say this is still going on.
but if you’re expecting people not to believe everything they read on the internet, or take it at face value, you should realize that applies to you as well. it does kind of boggle the mind that you would write something which could be disproven so easily, with minimal effort. literally, all one has to do is go to google news, search oscar grant, and there’s IndyMedia, OakalndLocal, SFBayview, and many other non-legacy sites with recent reports.
so i’m not sure what point you are trying to make here. There is clearly a discrepancy between what you are saying and reality.
so, are you going to mention this discrepancy on-air?
I have no idea what search engine your looking in or what your typing in Eric.. once again..Thats not what I’m getting … u pull up Google.. type in oscar Grant and click on news which is what most people do.. My screen shots from the other day are almost the same as today with the exception of an Oakland Local story by Cecil brown on Police thought.. The latest stories are Dec 17th.. and the Indy Bay story which came after mine.. has been moved to the second part of the page.. Its almost all mainstream outlets that pop up..
I was specifically referring to what shows up in Google News which was also the what Zennie wrote about.. His own column wasn’t showing up which is why I linked to the Seattle PI article.. None of the stories on Grant on his site which included mine were cited although a couple of weeks back they were prominent
When you type in the name Oscar Grant and simply look at what shows up in search results on the web its a bit more diverse but massively out of date with SF Bayview article form 2009 near the top along with a Christian Science Monitor, Huff Post and All Hip Hop article.. Those are top sites along with SF Gate..and other legacy sites..
Now I have said on several occasions I took screen shots.. I also am not in the business of just saying things.. You’ve accused me of embellishing and making up stuff versus exploring further as to why I’m so insistent … perhaps I’m correct in what I’ve drawn up..
Hell eric its not like you don’t know me.. u could’ve easily picked up a phone and spoken to me off line about this.. or even asked me to email the screen shots… if for any reason just to compare.. Other folks did..why not u?… It seems like you opted not to..but instead wanted to publicly make the point that I’m somehow falsifying information.. You also accused me of not checking things out.. That I find curious.. and I find that offensive.. We’ve been doing this for a long time.. So I would think that just on GP.. if u came up with different info, search results and I’m sticking to my guns and as I noted I’m not seeing what your seeing, then perhaps.. just maybe somethings up… Its obvious, I’m seeing something that you’re not and as you said if we’re to do due dilegence, you would check it out.. Just to make sure that I’m not saying outrageous shyt… As you noted why say such things publicly when as you noted this could be easily ‘disproved’? To what end that would get me.. I know not.
You’ve insisted I’m incorrect.. even as I’ve repeatedly noted what has repeatedly shown up.. Like you I also have folks I can and have checked with.. which is why I said it will be further addressed.. You said you weren’t trying to get in a pissing match with me.. But from the gate thats what you’ve been doing.. I haven’t disputed your claims.. I simply said thats not what’s showing up on this end..At the end of the day we should be comparing notes and trying to figure out why am I saying what I’m saying and why I’m seeing what I’m seeing.. vs trying to ‘prove me wrong’..
I noted oscar Grant because I’ve written so much on the topic and frequently reference other sites which means I use Google a lot..I definitely noted there was an absence of material. I t was more bothersome when Zennie’s site was no where to be seen..
just as an fyi, i agree that non-mainstream coverage of Oscar Grant and police accountability has been very important in getting the story out. but the same standard of accountability and responsible reporting needs to be applied across the board. if the SF Chronicle reports that 100 businesses were looted in Oakland, when in actuality it was 4 or 5, that should be pointed out. Similarly, if a blogger reports that an information source has disappeared or been delisted from Google news when that isn’t the case, that should be noted as well. normally, a retraction or clarification would be in order. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if that happens in this situation.
dave, i’ve always assumed we were on the same side.
but i think there’s a difference between you and I in terms of where we stand as journalists.
i would never commit an assumptive or speculative statement to print without checking on it first, especially when it might have far-reaching implications.
i dont want to blow this out of proportion, but you reported that some websites had disappeared, named those sites, and provided no factual proof of your claims.
i checked with one of those sites and found that not to be the case. it’s fair to say, therefore, that what you are saying may not be the case for the other sites. you reported Indy Bay disappeared from Google News rankings, as well as Oakland Local–a site i write for. That’s big news if it’s true, but as i said, a simple Search indicates otherwise.
so you’re saying i should have hollared at you privately instead of commenting on your blog? what, to preserve your ego from tarnish? Dave, don’t get me wrong. you’re the man for a lot of stuff. i’ve given you much props for being out in Front of this Net Neutrality issue for years, not to mention all the other stuff you do.
But no one is sacrosanct.
i personally feel it’s important not to subscribe to the same tactics the other side does. That means information, not disinformation.
we can continue this conversation offline, if you prefer.
you have the contact info, right?
No Eric.. this is not about ego.. far from it.. I’m saying that what I’m seeing is different then what your seeing.. what part of that is not understood? Obviously if I named sites it wasn’t to make it up.. It was to note what I witnessed..which I just explained.. U commented to say something was amiss which you should.. and I told you I checked and I’m seeing something different.. I took screen shots to show this.. What has resulted has been a number of accusations ranging from its time for a reality check to even now the assumption that I did not check things out before I wrote..Thats not true..
we can talk off line to compare notes because obviously wires are crossed..
wires are crossed? that’s all you got?
bro, i just went to google, typed in “oscar grant news,” hit search, opened up “news for Oscar Grant.” guess what? the top two results which came up were from SFBayview, a site you reported had “disappeared”.
crossed wires as you put it doesn’t begin to explain this.
i’m seeing a consistent pattern of SFBV, OL, or IndyMedia flip-flopping in the top spots in the rankings along with legacy sites, i.e. in the four times this past week i have repeated this process since you ran your article.
again, crossed wires doesn’t begin to explain this.
Now what is interesting is that some of the legacy sites you mention are running pickups from hyperlocal sites, and some of the indie sites are picking up the same articles which earlier ran on other alternative media sites. So, in effect, some of the non-MSM stories may actually be appearing more frequently as they are cross-posted more throughout the blogosphere and are also running on both legacy sites and alt-media sites.
there’s your reality check.
i’m still waiting for direct evidence supporting your claims that sources with heavy Grant coverage, such as OL and IndyMedia, disappeared as you stated.
so far you haven’t proven this happened as you say it did.
believe me, it’s not like i dont want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but if i follow the exact same process you outline and a consistent pattern emerges which completely contradicts your allegations, and this pattern also supports what OL’s Senior Editor, and web guru asserts, then there doesn’t seem to be anything to actually support your claim, other than what you have typed.
ask yourself, don’t you think that IndyMedia or Bayview would have raised a stink if they disappeared from google search results? Maybe if you had included a quote from any source other than yourself confirming your findings, they would be credible. as such, they’re not. it’s as simple as that, son.
We’ve moved past the point where you can just say “did not” or “uh-uh.” either there’s a logical, technical, fact-based explanation which can explain this discrepancy, or you have a very active imagination.
Now if you’ll excuse me, i must be on my way…