Google is Stifling the Conversation

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

The World Wide Web can be seen as a large collection of conversations, while not directly connected, all are reachable from other sites, or at least from the sites that link to them, and you can move from conversation to conversation, stop and listen, interact, or move on, it’s up to you. What if Google, the biggest search engine, decided it didn’t want to show ads for some of those conversations? This is the position Steven Rosenbaum finds himself. Steven Rosenbaum is an American television producer and the head of Magnify Media in New York City. He is best known as the creator of MTV News UNfiltered.

In 1998, Rosenbaum created and funded a video journalism program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and founded the BNN Scholarship for Columbia University journalism students. Rosenbaum directed the documentary feature 7 Days In September, a look at 9/11 and the week after. Rosenbaum also created the CameraPlanet 9/11 Archive, [1] the most comprehensive archive of footage from September 11 and its aftermath. Rosenbaum’s work has been acknowledged for its excellence in media. He has received 2 Emmy Awards, 6 New York Festival’s World Medals, 4 CINE Golden Eagles, and 6 Telly Awards.

An award winning producer who created a site, Warzone Video, just for uploading of videos and exchange of information from people involved in the war between Israel and Lebanon. From his blog,

On July 18th - as the conflict in the middle east was heating up, I began to search the web for videos shot by real people of the conflict. I wanted to hear real voices. I found plenty. And so I created a channel to aggregate those videos - organize them - in a central place where people could see them and share their own.

There was no spin. No pro Israel bias. No Pro Lebanese agenda. Not that opinion and perspective should be censored. But in my case, I wanted to create a place with room for people of all persuasions to post and share opinions.

Then I set up a Google Adwords account to let people know the site existed.

This is where it gets interesting. I know Google has every right to decide who it allows to advertise on their site, but they don’t seem to have any problems with sex videos, or sites dealing with the war that don’t contain videos. And their job is to “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Here is the reply Google sent,

Content: Due to the sensitive nature of this matter, we are not able to run this ad at this time. As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.

Unacceptable Content: Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without censoring search results. Please note that the decisions we make concerning advertising in no way affect the search results we deliver. Please note that both your ad and keywords have been suspended at this time.

Wayne Porter has been all over this the past couple days with numerous posts and research.

To my eye the only difference between Steve’s ads, and the ones above are that they point to text and not video. While it is Google’s site, and they reserve the right to cancel any ads you have to conjure up with that dingy “Don’t be Evil” mantra.
I would ask is it evil to disallow advertising that brings users to real footage of current events even if the footage is real?

Granted it is a different situation and Google has the contractual right to reject the ads- but should they? Do we need Google to guard us against the images of war- the real images? Do we need them to sanitize the media to the point where it is no better then CNN? Maybe if we saw more real footage we could dispense with these horrible wars?

And he goes on in that post to compare this to Google’s philosophy. In his next post,

I truly believe the Internet is a vast conversation. Aside from all the software, hardware and fiber the Internet is really made up of people and their stories, their beliefs, their interactions and their lives. Perhaps I am too altruistic- believing that the Internet can enable everyday citizens to have a voice, to have the ability to generate feedback- to act as change agents and to bypass the structures of old that control the flow of information. In many ways this is being proven out at times with blogging, with sites like Digg and Reddit, with Slashdot, with podcasts, video casts, message boards and photo sharing. Never before have Netizens, have humans, been able to share their own realities so quickly and with such clarity.

From Steve: I’m a bit stunned by what Google did. It makes me sad. It’s like the whole thing that I thought the internet was going to do is going away… replacing the NBC censor with the Google censor. Why don’t they remove the site from search results as well?

We Say: Do we need Google to decide what we should see and not see? Or do we just need them to rank the most relevant information first? Check out Steve’s site, watch the videos or don’t watch the videos, that’s up to you, not Google. Digg Steve’s article here. Let Google know we just need them to find the information, not protect us from it.