This is old news, but I saw people talking about it recently, so I decided to clarify some things. Google News shows you news stories on other news sites. Google doesn’t write any news stories themselves. So if the news site lies, Google doesn’t know (unless it’s obvious and their algorithm can pick it out). I don’t believe Google has done much filtering, if any, up to now. But now that the word is spreading to 16-year-old newbies, they’re going to have to. Unfortunately, there’s bound to be some false positives.

I’ve known about the existence and power of Press Release sites ever since Google News was launched. Heck, I was obsessed with it for months (not anymore) and used it a few times. I got a couple news stories in Google News (I don’t remember them now). It’s a good way to advertise, but the moral side of me hates cluttering up real news stories with free advertisements.

Please don’t mess up the web. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I want to read real news, not random stuff the kid across the street wrote just to get attention. I don’t know of an easy solution, but certainly, every news site included in Google News needs to have an editor. If the news site takes stories from anywhere, it will be easy to abuse. At the same time, they need to include as much real news as possible.