A Week's Exclusion from Google Raises UN-answered Questions

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

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?

Google's Michael T. Jones, with UNDP's Dervis, Ban Ki-moon and Cisco

   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.

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These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

  Because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

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Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

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