You wrote: "do a search of "george bush" in google news. http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=george++bush&btnG=Search+News
does that look fair and balanced to you?" OK, I did that. And I found articles that are slanted (from my POV) against Bush. Is it the Google folks? No. My opinion is that these results are a function of several factors:
- the news sources that permit themselves to be indexed
- the news sources that contain, in your search example, the words 'george' and 'bush' but not necessarily in that order.
- and how the editors of the news sources choose to write their headlines.
In other words, since the majority of news media is MSM and is slanted against Bush what we see via your Google search is just what we would expect. It is a function of MSM, and not Google's searching mechanism.
But this is my opinion.
If your contention is that anyone else can manipulate Google search results for files or images, that I don't dispute.
Just try the following:
Do an image search on Google with safe search turned OFF for the following three individuals (keep the quotes)
"george bush"
"hillary clinton"
"john kerry"
The pictures for the individuals are not always flattering, depending upon POV, and will change depending upon how often the picture gets clicked on and thus affect ranking.
i think there is one small point you may be missing.
their source isn't always the MSM. often they link
unknown papers and blogs for their source. when you
pick from that pool of knowledge you "could" present
a far and balance view "if" you wanted.
that is where i have a problem with them.
because google is not a spider engine search the results are based on human input. that human input is does by mostly west coast leftist hell bent on presenting a negative view on the conservative view point.
their image links just make it that much more clear.