I signed up for Google News Alerts via e-mail under various keywords. Every so often I get Google e-mails alerting me to a Free Republic thread about the keyword. I've even gotten News Alerts to threads I posted.
So Google is "reading" us as news, at least in part.
And filtering, no doubt.
That's encouraging, though I never bump into it when I just go to http://news.google.com which MOST online users do.